


Not all Mutants

by littleblackbow



Category: Marvel, X-Men
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 107,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5304224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackbow/pseuds/littleblackbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all mutants have powers that are useful in a fight. Not all mutants are strong. Sometimes there are little powers that don't seem to have a real purpose. But maybe those powers have a different kind of place in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not All Mutants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all mutant powers are useful in a fight. And not all mutants need to be taken away from their families to go to a special school and turned into weapons.

Not all mutants are powerful. Some are just people who have some quirky little thing that they do. Maybe their hands turn pink when they get nervous, or they can change the color of their hair at will. It’s just a little thing. It’s really nothing to be afraid of.  
  
But that’s not much consolation to a kid who has a silly little parlor trick that they can do.  
  
Oh, it’s fine and dandy when you’re a kid. It’s just something you can do that your brother can’t. And your mom knows, but she just brushes it aside and shrugs it off.  
  
That is until the big “M” word is splashed all over the media. Suddenly, it’s not so much fun anymore. That fun thing you used to do turns into something shameful overnight. Kids at school start making nasty jokes about mutants, and call people “mutes” as some kind of dirty word. “Oh, she’s probably a mute,” or  “He’s being such a mute today!”  
  
And those who have some kind of mutant gene go into hiding.  
  
Or they leave town.

* * *

  
We were told it was because mom got a new job in another state. It would be a great opportunity for her to work at a larger university, even if the pay was a little lower. And although we would have to start at a new school without knowing anyone, it would be okay ‘cause I was thirteen and Bradley was ten, and we still had plenty of time to adjust.  
  
It was exciting while we were packing. It was kind of sad when we had to say goodbye to our friends and Uncle Dan drove the big moving van off. And it wasn’t until Bradley was asleep in the back seat and I was sitting in the front when mom opened up to me.  
  
“When we get there, I want you to make sure that nobody knows about your gift, okay?”  
  
“Okay. I mean, I guess I can.”  
  
“I know you can, honey. It’s just that people will start talking again. And I know what you do isn’t anything dangerous, but most people just don’t know.”  
  
“Yeah. I mean, how could I hurt anyone. I’m not even really a mute.”  
  
“Don’t say mute, honey. A mute is a person who cannot speak. And yes, you are a mutant, but you’re not like the ones in the news.”  
  
I put my feet up on the dashboard. “I’m not really.”  
  
“It’s alright. Just like there are some people have an extra toe on their feet or have different colored eyes, it’s just a strange little thing that happens. And you have nothing to be ashamed of. I will always support you on that. But not everyone knows about that. They all think that anyone who’s different is dangerous.”  
  
“That’s stupid,” I huffed.  
  
“Yeah, well a lot of people are stupid.” Mom smiled.  
  
There was a long silence as we passed two exits and a rest area.  
  
“So, we’re moving because people were talking about me?” I asked.  
  
“No, we’re moving because I have a chance to start working at a larger university with more opportunities.”  
  
I took a deep breath. “But it’s in the same state as that school.”  
  
Mom nodded. “Yes. And if you want, we can go look at it. But that’s not the reason we’re going.”  
  
“I want to go look at it.”  
  


* * *

  
I knew it wasn’t for me. I had a feeling there in the car, and as we pulled up to that giant old brick mansion a few days later, I was absolutely positive it wasn’t for me.  
  
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” mom said.  
  
“No, it’s okay. I should at least go and look, right?”  
  
“Well, since we’re here, anyway.” She smiled at me. That always made me feel better. One thing I always knew was that mom was always on my side, no matter what. “I suppose I can park just anywhere. There seems to be plenty of space.”  
  
“Do they know we’re coming?” I looked around. There was someone on the roof of the house perched like a hawk looking down at us. There was also a woman staring out at us from the third floor window, and two men at the front door. One of them was very tall and the other was much shorter. They both looked like thugs from some mafia movie.  
  
“Well, I did call. And the lady who answered the phone said that we’d be welcome to stop in anytime.” Mom put the car in park, and shrugged. “Do you trust them?”  
  
“I don’t know them.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, I trust them alright so far.”  
  
“Just remember that mutants are people. You’ve got a small gift that most people can’t see. Some of them have pretty big gifts that they can’t hide as well.” Mom patted me on the arm. “Let’s go. No time like the present, right?”  
  
The two men at the door nodded as we came closer. The taller one was frowning the whole time, but the shorter man with the scruffy beard winked at me and gave me an “ok” sign with his hand.  
  
“We’re here for an interview,” mom told them.  
  
“Yes. We know,” the taller man said. He motioned for us to go into the foyer and down the hall. The place looked like the house from the Addams Family. It was all dark with wood paneling and this giant staircase right in front of the door. I was sure I’d seen this same design a hundred times on Masterpiece Theater. “The professor is waiting for you in his office.”  
  
I didn’t like the professor. And it wasn’t because he was in a wheelchair. I don’t care about things like that. But there was this way he looked, as if he was amused by me, and thought I was some funny little kid.  
  
Mom talked with him for a while about the move. She told him about how she appreciated what he was trying to do, and then asked a lot of questions about what the goals of this school were. I just sat there, chewing my lip, waiting for the inevitable questions.  
  
So, what is her power? What does she do? What makes her different?  
  
When he asked, I told him.  
  
And then he chuckled and gave me this patronizing smile.  
  
I knew this place wasn’t for me.  
  
That’s when mom got mad. “Look, Professor, I don’t know what kind of person you are, and I don’t know anything about your goals, but I’ve been working in education my whole adult life. And one thing I’ve learned is that every single talent, no matter how huge or how small it seems, has some place in this world. Now, if you’re only interested in those who have gifts that can be used for fighting, then this isn’t a school for my daughter.”  
  
“Madam, I assure you that’s not at all what we’re doing here.” As he held up his hands and began to speak, my mother shifted back in her chair and crossed her arms.  
  
I’d seen it before. Mom was getting ready to fight, and once she started, she would keep at it until she won.  
  
“Let’s just go, mom,” I said quietly.  
  
“No, I think I need to have a little talk with the professor. Why don’t you wait just outside for us to finish?” She gave me her fake smile and nodded curtly.  
  
I looked back at the professor. “I don’t want to be here, anyway. So, just listen to her, okay?”  
  
I turned to leave them and headed out the door. Just on the other side was that short scruffy man. “You don’t want to be here?” he asked.  
  
“It isn’t for me. I’ve just got these three stupid little “gifts” as mom calls them, and they’re really not much use to anyone unless you’re bored one afternoon and want me to do some tricks.” I shoved my hands in my jeans jacket pockets and shrugged. “I’m pretty weak.” He nodded over to a bench in the hall and motioned for me to sit.  
  
Then he sat next to me and brought out a cigar from his jacket pocket. “Weak is a dumb word. Nobody’s really weak. I guess if you’re really old and frail and you don’t have your mind about you anymore, you’re weak. But pretty much everyone I’ve ever met has some strength or other.”  
  
“I don’t,” I sighed resolutely. This was something I’d come to grips with a long time ago. “I’m pretty average in every way. I get all Bs and Cs in school, I can’t play sports very well ‘cause I have asthma, and even my little gifts are kind of worthless. They’re just strong enough to get everyone  in the outside world to hate me, and not strong enough to come to a place like this and be with people like you.”  
  
He looked at me as if I had just grown another head. “How old are you? You talk like you’re forty.”  
  
“Nah, it’s just that...”  
  
“What do you do?” he interrupted.  
  
I sighed. It was time for the little magic show. I got up and went across the hall to where there was a small bowl of butter mints. I took six of them out of the dish and went back over to the bench. “Right, okay. So, the first thing is that I can tell if there’s another mutant around. I don’t know who they are, and I can’t really tell, but there’s a funny taste in the air if there are more of us close to me. Which, is kind of cool. I mean, it felt good knowing that there were a few more of us at my old school.”  
  
“Well, that’s pretty handy,” he said.  
  
“I don’t know who, though. It’s just a lingering taste. Kind of like when someone eats garlic and you won’t know who it is unless you’re right in their face. But that’s just a little thing. The main thing is this.” I took one of the candies in my hand and held it for a moment, then held it out to the man. “So, go ahead and eat this.”  
  
He took the mint and popped it in his mouth. “Holy sh-- smokes! It’s like eating watermelon.”  
  
“Yeah. That one’s watermelon.” I took another mint into my hand and held it for a moment. “Try this one.”  
  
“Wow, that’s got all the juice and texture and everything. What’s this one?” He took the second one and put it in his mouth. “Steak?”  
  
“Well, it was supposed to be pork chop, but sometimes steak and pork chop come out the same. Since it’s that char-broiled flavor.”  
  
“That’s freakin’ amazing!” he told me. “So you can make candy taste like other things?”  
  
“Well, it’s a little more than that. It works with pretty much all food. And I can change smells of things, too. But the problem is that if I’m not touching it right before you eat it, it doesn’t work. The effect wears off after about 30 seconds. Unless I’m really angry or stressed or upset. Then it’s just best if nobody around me eats anything. You could go for a bite of ice cream and get a mouthful of broccoli.” I put the rest of the mints in my pocket and leaned back on the bench.  
  
“That’s still pretty neat there, kid.”  
  
“But kind of useless. It’s just enough to make me really weird. And make a lot of people out there hate me.”  
  
“Yup. There’s a lot of hate in the world,” the man said. “But you can’t let it get to you. ‘Cause there’s a lot of good people, too. And for every ten haters, you’ve got to keep the faith for that one person who’s got yer back. Like your mom, in there. She’s giving the professor an earful right now. And I know he would be glad to have you here. But I think he can see that your home is still a safe place for you. And it’s best if you’re with your family.”  
  
“I didn’t want to come here, anyway. Not to go to school here.” I took in a deep breath and huffed it out.  
  
“Why are you here, then?”  
  
“I think I came just to see that I’m not alone. I mean, it’s one thing knowing that there are two or three others in your school, but it’s another thing to know that there are dozens out here all living good, kind of normal lives in their weirdness, just like me.” I shook my head. “No, that didn’t make any sense.”  
  
“It made perfect sense. We’re all weird, and we’re all trying to live as normal a life as we can. And sometimes being together makes it okay.” He looked down the hall and nodded at the office door. “It sounds like they’re almost done.”  
  
“It usually doesn’t take her this long, to be honest.” I smiled at the man. “By the way, what do you do? I mean, what’s your gift.”  
  
“My gift? Or is it a curse? Who knows.”  
  
“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.” I shifted to sit on my hands.  
  
He brought up one arm and held it in front of my face. Then, as he made a fist with his other hand, a blade slowly came out from behind his knuckles. “Mine’s pretty scary.”  
  
I sniffed. “Not really,” I lied.  
He smiled and then proceeded to cut himself slowly with the blade. And as his skin opened under the knife, it started sealing itself back up again. “I get hurt, then I heal.”  
  
“That’s almost like a zipper... pretty cool.”  
  
“Maybe. It’s good that I heal, but that also means that I have to hurt a lot. I think your kind of gift is a lot better.”  
  
My mom came out of the office. She looked satisfied. That meant she felt like she won her argument. She came over to me and smiled. “Are you ready to go home?”  
  
I looked at the man sitting next to me and nodded at him, then stood. “It was nice talking to you. I don’t think I’ll be going to school here.”  
  
“No, I don’t expect you will,” he told me. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t meet again.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Mom smiled and thanked the man for looking after me while she was talking to the professor, then we both turned and headed toward the front door.  
  
“Oh, little lady,” the man called from down the hall.  
  
I turned to him.  
  
“Remember this one thing, if you never remember anything else. Every one of us has a time and a place where our gifts are needed. It might be at home, or it might be halfway across the world. You just never know. But there will be somebody out there who needs even your talents, and to that person, you won’t be average, but extraordinary.”  
  
I smiled and nodded. “Thanks. And for you... try not to get hurt so much. Sometimes zippers get stuck.”  
  
His laugh echoed in the hallway. “I’ll remember that!”


	2. Just This One...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years later, they meet again.

It had been ten years since the last time this had happened. In all that time, I was finishing college, moving from New York to Winnipeg, then back to California, and starting my fifth job in as many years.

Oh, I got the card from him when I graduated. And I had received an odd text message or two every so often. But then that’s all there was, and I wouldn’t hear from him for another year or two.

“Come on, let’s get you up,” I said softly as I lifted him out of the construction debris.

He groaned as he tried to push himself away, but ended up slipping out of my grasp and falling back into a pile of trash bags.

“Stop resisting. I know who you are, and I’m here to help you. Now pull yourself together as much as you can and let me carry you out of here.”

“Dey’ll come athter you, too.” He spat out some blood and what looked like a chunk of his tongue. One of the blades in his hand wasn’t fully retracted, and I was afraid he’d cut his face as he wiped his mouth. But he’d been through this so many times before, it had probably been ages since he’d last cut himself.

“No they won’t. Whoever _they_ are, they won’t be able to find you if you’re with me. Now stop trying to talk and let me help you.” He didn’t recognize me. But then again, why should he have? He hadn’t actually seen me in years. And even then, it was only a few minutes conversation at that school, the one time when he dropped by my high school graduation party. Still, he’d always been about as much of a father figure as I’d ever had.

I pulled him closer and hauled his body up to rest his weight on my hip. “Let’s get you home, Zipper-man.”

 

* * *

 

Living in California, my apartment was small. In fact, it was a _ridiculously_ small studio, roughly the size of my dorm room in college. There wasn’t much I could afford in the bay area on a nursing salary. But still, my unexpected houseguest was a pretty small guy, so I knew it wouldn’t be too much trouble.

We received a few strange looks from the lady who was smoking out on the fire escape, but I just mouthed out “drunk,” and she nodded and went back to puffing on her cancer stick.

“You smell like urine, body odor, and blood,” I told him as I dragged him in the front door, kicking it closed behind me. “You’re going in the shower before anything else.”

“Don’ know ‘f I can stand,” he mumbled.

“Well, I don’t have a bath, so you’ll have to sit, then. And I’ll get you some scissors to cut off that, what is it, a costume? Uniform?” I helped him sit on the bathroom floor, turned the water on the sprayer and waited for it to warm up. “You’ll have to cut around the places where it’s stuck to your wounds.”

He nodded and let out a long breath. “Hurts more ‘an it should.”

“Yeah. What happened to your zipper-power?” The water was warming up. I set the sprayer down and helped him into the shower stall. “Here, lean up against the wall. Just… stay under the water for a while, and I’ll be back with the scissors. If you feel faint, hold onto the rail there, and ease yourself down to sit, okay?”

“Sound like a goddamn nurse, little lady.” He flashed a weak smile as he leaned over onto the shower wall.

“It’s because I am one.” I leaned over him and felt his forehead, then took his pulse. It wasn’t great, but at least he didn’t seem to be in mortal danger. “I’ll be right back.”

He needed a lot of help showering, in fact. Not only was he battered and bruised, cut to shreds and wheezing, but he was dehydrated, as well. I cut his clothes off of him, and washed carefully around his wounds.

“I should be healing by now,” he told me as I helped him into a bathrobe.

“Yeah, well, you’re not. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but there are needle marks on your arm, your back, and your left leg. I have no idea what you’ve had injected into you, but I’d lay odds on it having something to do with your zipper being stuck.” I helped him into the one room and sat him down on my bed.

“Still calling me a zipper-man?” He leaned over with his arms on his knees.

“Yeah, well, it feels weird calling you by your name when you always just called me “little lady.” Besides, old habits die hard, right?” I went to the sink and got a glass of warm water with some honey and salt mixed into it and a straw. Before I handed it to him, I stuck my finger in the liquid. “Drink this.”

“What flavor is it this time?”

I sat next to him. “Watermelon.”

“Damn right it is.” He took a sip of the water and smiled. “I love watermelon.”  


* * *

 

“Your place is really small.”

“Yeah, well, so are you, so I guess it should suit you just fine.” I got up from my computer and went over to the bed. “Feeling better?”

“No. Not better enough.” He lifted one arm and looked at his hand. The claw had finally retracted, but there was still a huge gash in his palm. “This should have healed by now.”

“There’s a clinic down in the Mission district for people like us. But I’m not sure they’re prepared for you, zipper-man.”

“You can stop calling me that, Lucy.”

Something felt really weird when he said my name. I hadn’t expected it, and I hadn’t actually heard him say it before. Even in his postcards and text messages, he would address me as either little lady, or LL. “You don’t like it?”

“Just call me Logan. Or Jim. Jim’s better. Nobody calls me Jim.”

“Okay, then I’ll call you Jim.” I checked his pulse. It was much stronger than in the morning when I brought him home. “Well, now that you’ve had some water and a little sleep, I’m going to get you some food, okay?”

“Not yet. C’mere and sit. We’ve got some catching up to do.” He tried to shift over, but only managed to roll onto his side.

“Don’t move. I’ll get my chair.”

I sat next to him and waited for him to settle back into the bed. Then I put my hand on his neck. He closed his eyes and sighed. “So, how’s your mom?”

“She’s just fine. She’s the assistant administrator of the Liberal Arts department at her university now. Bradley’s doing fine, too. He’s working as an animator at a game company. You know, one of those that makes smartphone apps.”

He smiled.

“He’s got a fiancee, too. They’re waiting until they can save up some decent money for a wedding. So, maybe next year, they’ll…”

“What about you?” he interrupted.

“I told you, I’m a nurse. I work at Saint Theresa’s down in the…”

“No, you got yourself a man?”

“No.” I could feel him relax under my hand.

“That “no” sounded pretty firm.”

“I’m… I’m not sure I ever will, to be honest.” I started to move my hand away, but he brought his own hand up to my elbow and held it there.

“Don’t. You’re warm, and that feels good. So, you got yourself a woman, then?” He opened one eye and the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile.

“No, not like that, either. Actually, my condition has gotten worse over the years, and this little gift that I used to have is turning into something of a curse, like yours.”

I’d never talked to my therapist about these things. I’d never really talked to anyone about it, in fact. Even my mother didn’t know just how strong my gift was and how deeply it had been affecting me.

“It isn’t just that I can touch things and change the taste or smell of them now.” I spoke softly, carefully choosing my words. “You’re feeling some of it right now, I’ll bet. My hand is a little sweaty, and apparently my sweat, and saliva have an intensified effect on people.” His neck muscles tensed and I could feel his pulse quicken. “When it comes to food, I can make it taste like things people want. But direct contact with my body fluids can sometimes have a negative effect. I found out the hard way, in college. I was on a date and… well, things went from great to horrible with just one kiss.”

He swallowed hard and his whole body tensed. “You were raped?”

“No. Oh, God no. It didn’t come to that.” He relaxed and let his hand slip off of my elbow. “I can change smells, remember? One switch from floral perfume to skunk and rotten onion, and he literally fell over from the stench. But then the jig was up, so to speak. Once someone finds out you’ve got the M-gene, there’s not much hope for you.”

The room went quiet. We had never talked about things this personal before. Not even in my messages to him or his postcards to me. It was all idle banter about grades and school, jobs and weird travel experiences. He’d send me a message saying “I believe in you!” and I’d send him a text message back saying “you’re weird. but thanks.” And that was about as personal as we had ever got.

After a few more moments, I got up. “We should get you some clothes. You can’t live in my bathrobe the whole time you’re recovering.” I went over to my wardrobe.

“Why not? It’s comfortable.”

“Yeah, so are scrubs.” I picked the pale blue ones with pictures of kittens playing all over them. “It’s a good thing you’re short and I’m fat.” I tossed them on the bed. “These should fit you just fine.”

“You’re not fat.” He picked up the shirt and gave me a questioning look.

“What, do you want my underwear, too?”

“This will be fine. Thanks.”

“Right, well, if you think you can get dressed on your own, I’ll go make you some food. It will be nutritious, full of protein and vitamins, and I can make it taste like anything you want. So, what flavor?”

“Liver and onions,” he grunted as he pushed the quilt to one side.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Yup.”  


* * *

 

He had slept for most of the night, only tripping over me once on the way to the bathroom. When he got back into the bed, light was just starting to filter in through my blinds, and we were both very much awake again.

“You said you were a nurse.”

“Yeah. At Saint Theresa’s near the harbor.” I had been sleeping on the floor and had a stiff neck from it, so I sat up and leaned up against my wardrobe. “I’ve been there for eight months now."

“How does that work out with your abilities? I mean, if people get too close to you, or are in contact with you too much, don’t they get…”

“I mostly work in pediatrics. They don’t have the hormones to react to me yet. And sometimes I’m over with the eating disorders, and they don’t have the energy. Besides, most of the eating disorder patients are female.”

Jim was looking a lot better. His healing ability was working again, and I could see that some of the scabs on his arms were already starting to fall off. “What about your co-workers?” he asked.

“Saint Theresa’s is run by nuns. The only men who work there are a few doctors and nurses down in surgery, Father Martin who comes in on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and a night custodian. I just steer clear of the parents and siblings.” I shrugged. “ I also wear scrubs, gloves, and a face mask most of the time.”

Jim looked out the window. “You’re doing real good, Lucy.”

“You mean I’m doing _well_?”

“Well, that, too. But you’re doing some real good, in the world. Most of us can’t use our special talents to actually help people. My healing ability only works on me. And when people have tried to take it out of me and put it into someone else? Well, it doesn’t work out so great.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about that.” I got up and turned on my electric water kettle. “And thanks for keeping me out of it all. I would appreciate it if  you could keep my little secret a secret.”

“You mean you don’t want the rest of them to know that you have this amazing ability to manipulate people by messing with their senses? Oh, whyever not?” He smiled. His missing tooth had grown back overnight. “Don’t worry, Lucy. I’m not going to tell anyone about you. You’re far too precious to get involved in the pack I run with.”

“Thanks.” The water started to boil. I nodded over to the pot. “Sounds like it’s ready.”

“Coffee?”

“Tea, actually. But for you, I can make it coffee.”

“You’re the best.”


	3. Friends are weird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit happens, and then we do stuff that doesn't make any sense.

Whatever it is you think you’re going to get out of life, you might as well take that plan, crumble it up into a tiny ball, set it on fire, and chuck it into the river. Because nothing ever goes as planned. That’s NOTHING. Even your bowl of ramen that you’re planning on having for dinner will be just a little too salty or a little too spicy, or won’t be exactly what you were looking for. 

Nothing goes as planned.

That being said, there are certain things we can do to make ourselves feel better about the randomness that will be our lives. First, just let go of whatever expectations you might have. Dreams are fine. They give us something to work toward. But expectations are dangerous and were created by some demonic creatures who only want to drag us down into that pit of despair we so often hear about.

Don’t expect anything, but dream for it.

Then, there’s this bit of advice I received years ago. It was almost prophetic in a way. Especially considering all of the events that have followed it. Just keep in mind that whatever your abilities are, there’s someone out there who will think they’re extraordinary. It might be at home, or halfway across the world, but someone out there somewhere needs whatever it is you can do. Whether it be on a large scale or pathetically small scale.

Rescue that kitten. Help that kid with his algebra, draw a picture of that bird and give it to the old man who feeds them in the park. There’s something you can do that can help someone and make their day or even their life.

I’m writing all of this as a preface for yet another one of my bizarre interactions with my friend, Jim. He was the one who gave me that advice when I was a kid, and he seems to be the one who’s benefitted from my particular talents more often than anyone else. Friends are weird like that sometimes, but he’s exceptionally weird. Extraordinarily weird. Uncannily weird, even.

“Jim?” I found him sitting outside the fruit and vegetable market down near the lake. He was dressed in somewhat normal clothes for once, although he looked something like a homeless man with his unkempt hair, that dirty flannel plaid shirt and his dark brown overcoat. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you?” He got up from the bench and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I was waiting for you to finish your shopping.”

I held up my canvas bag of vegetables and smiled. “I’m making potato leek soup tonight if you’re interested.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Might as well be.” I smiled and nodded in the direction of the BART station. “Come on.”

He came up to me and took the bag of groceries out of my hand. “Still in that tiny box you call an apartment?”

“No, I’ve moved into a mansion up in Berkeley.” I sighed. “Of course I’m still there. Where else can I afford to live out here?”

“Then why don’t you live somewhere else?”

It was not the conversation I wanted to have on my commute home. “I would say I’m staying for my job, but…

“You don’t work there anymore.” He finished. “I stopped by the hospital first. Couldn’t find even a whiff of your scent in the whole area. So I figured you’d gone on to something else.”

“More like laid off to do nothing else.”

We went into the station and boarded the train. For the most part, our ride was silent, other than a few attempts at conversation about my mom, and my brother and his new baby.

But as soon as the door closed in my apartment, before I could even put the groceries away, the questions began. Why was I laid off? What happened? Did it have anything to do with my abilities? Was I doing alright? Did I have enough money to live?

He may be a weird friend, but he cared, and that was important.

As I started washing the potatoes, he leaned up against the kitchen counter to face me. “I’ve been worried.”

“You could have just sent me a text message. It’s been a year.”

“I broke my phone. The one with your number in it.”

“How did it break? And couldn’t you have just got another one and used the same sim card…”

“No, it didn’t break. I broke it. Someone wanted it and it had your number in it, so I broke the memory chip thing.” He looked up at the ceiling of my kitchenette and sighed. “There’s been a lot of stuff happening in my world lately, and I didn’t want anyone to get you involved. So, I had to cut ties for a little while.”

“I appreciate that.” I set the potatoes aside and brought out the leeks to wash. “And I’m fine. What happened at the hospital was just a bunch of nonsense brought on by people who don’t understand the first thing about life.” I handed him the leeks. “Dice these, please. The knives are in the second drawer.”

He chuckled. “You know about my hidden talents as a chef?”

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m joking,” he admitted. “But I do make a pretty mean bacon and eggs.” He brought out my large chef’s knife and the vinyl cutting board. “So, are you going to tell me what happened at your job?”

“Hmm. Well, the short story is that I was let go because I turned a young girl into a lesbian. The longer story involves administrative leave, and pacifying some donors and someone finding out I was an M-type.”

“That word seems to be changing every time I see you.”

“Yeah. It does.” I started peeling the potatoes. “I don’t really care what they call me, but it’s annoying and upsetting when I’m judged based on something I can’t control.”

“Racism never goes away, Lucy.”

“No, I know that. Anyway, they did give me what I’d saved up in my pension, plus three and a half month’s salary for firing me without grounds. It’s more than I expected considering how the laws currently exempt private businesses from catering to mutants.”

Jim put the knife down and went into the room without another word. I finished cutting the vegetables and started the soup cooking, then joined him. He was sitting in my only chair, staring out the window. I sat on the bed. “I’ll just find another job. I’m sure I can find something in three and a half months.”

He nodded.

“So, you didn’t tell me why you’re here.”

“It’s a long story.” He turned to face me. “Seems like all of my stories are long these days.”

“We all have long stories. That’s why we enjoy watching movies so much. It’s fun to see someone’s story cut down to just a couple hours of highlights without having to slog through all of the horrible mundane stuff that happens.”

He smiled. “You’re probably right about that.”

“So, what happened to you to get you so down you had to come and visit little ‘ol me? Highlights, or mundane stuff?”

“Too many highlights, and not enough mundane, I would say.” Jim leaned forward in the chair and stared into my pile of dirty laundry on the floor. “I’m not saying you’re mundane, but with all of the doom and gloom on an epic scale I have to suffer through, it’s nice to come to someone whose biggest problem is racism and not that her entire town’s been slaughtered by some ancient demonic entity.”

“That happened?” I kicked my laundry under the bed. He looked up and smiled.

“No, but stuff like that. It seems to happen all the time in my world.”

The soup was boiling in the kitchen, so I got up to check on it. On my way to the kitchenette, he grabbed my wrist. “Wait.” Leaning over, he hugged me around my waist, pressing his face into my stomach. 

I looked down at his broad back hunched over the arm of the chair, and put my hand on top of his head. There was nothing I could say, and I didn’t even know what had happened for him to need this kind of comfort. I didn’t even know what he needed me to do. “Come on, let’s get some soup, and we’ll talk about it after we eat.”

He sat up again, bringing his hands to my hips, then letting them fall back into his lap. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I nodded. “Okay. Then we we’ll sit here and talk about something else. Or nothing at all. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m just happy to see you again.” I took a step back. “Does your healing factor mean you can’t get drunk?”

“Depends on what you’ve got.” He leaned back and smiled. I remember that one time he’d come to my graduation party, my mom had offered him some bourbon, and he graciously accepted it. So, booze seemed to be a good suggestion.

“Well, wine with dinner, and someone gave me a bottle tequila as a kind of going-away present. My co-workers apparently felt at least a little bad for throwing me under the bus.”

“Tequila? That might do it. Heaven knows it can certainly lead to some bad decisions.”

“Or help you recover from someone else’s bad decisions.”

“Good point.”

 

We ate. We drank. I got drunk. Jim drank some more. After he’d finished the tequila, I stumbled into the kitchen and brought out a bottle of very cheap gin, licked the inside of the cap, shook it up, and handed him something that would taste like a 20-year single malt scotch. “Here,” I told him, handing him the bottle. “Try this out. This is just a teeny-tiny taste of it, but maybe you can see why I have trouble with men.”

“Just a taste?” He gave me a questioning look. “This is probably a bad idea.” He set the bottle down on the floor.

I flopped down next to the bottle and picked it up again. “I promise it won’t taste bad. I know this is pure gutrot gin, but I’m sure it’lll--”

“That’s not what I mean.” Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think you should get to bed and I should leave.”

He sounded weird. He sounded like he was either afraid for me, or uncomfortable with me. I pushed myself up and sat on the corner of the bed. “We haven’t even talked yet.” I tried my best to sober up, forcing myself to focus and not let the giddiness take over.

He pointed to the bottle. “Okay, let’s talk about that. What does it taste like?”

“To you, it’ll prolly taste like a really smooth single malt.”

“And to you?”

Nobody had ever asked before. Nobody had cared enough to ask. Mom never wanted to know much about my ability, other than to think of ways for me to control the involuntary aspect of it. My brother hated everything about it, and he never really forgave me for being different. And after we moved to New England, it became a secret.

To me, it would taste like gutrot. Just like the tea always tasted like tea, the miso soup always tasted like miso soup, and the buttermints… well, that’s why I had kept some for myself. I love buttermints.

“It would taste like lighter fluid that’s been run through a pine needle filter.” I tossed the bottle in his lap. “But to you, it would taste like what my mom gave you at my high school graduation.”

I wasn’t sure what the look he gave me meant at that point. I had always known there was something feral inside of him, but the way he looked wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. “So, all of these things you do for other people. You get no benefit from your own powers at all?”

I shrugged. “Well, I told you I can tell when there’s another one of us around. That’s pretty helpful to me. And being able to change the smell of things so that other people… oh, I guess that’s not for me, either.” I thought for a moment, trying to brush aside the alcohol-induced cobwebs. “No, I guess… heh. Pretty useless.” I turned to look away. It was just like the first time we’d met. Only this time I was older and I should have known better - should have been more confident, and less embarrassed with how pathetic I was.

“That’s not where I’m going with this.” He got up and stood in front of me for a moment, then sat next to me on the bed. “I wasn’t asking you to point out your weaknesses. I was asking you because I’m amazed by what you are.”

“Amazed?”

“You have no idea what’s out there. All of those things that you could have become. I’ve spent most of my life fighting. There’s so much blood on these hands, I could put the red cross out of business if I hadn’t washed it all away. That motley family of mutants that I have are fighting all the time. It’s like we’ve forgotten how to do anything else. Even those who have abilities that could really help the greater good are using them to fight the greater bad, instead.”

“Nicely put.” I smiled. “I read about you guys sometimes. And, no offense, but I am glad that I didn’t go with you when I was a kid. I’m not strong enough to run along with…”

“You’re not listening, little lady. I’m not saying we’re stronger than you. I’m saying that you’re better than all of us put together. You stick with those little guns of yours through all of the stuff that you hear and all of what’s going on, and you’re STILL not out to hurt a single damn soul. That’s…”

“It’s what I do.”

“It’s what we all should do. If we could. If we knew how.” He picked up the bottle and held it in front of him. “When you were a kid, you said it would last about 30 seconds. How long will it last now?”

I shrugged. “A couple days, I guess? I don’t really know. I can’t taste the difference. But some of the kids in the hospital say it lasts at least until the next day.”

“I’ll keep it, then. Maybe drink it when I’m hell and gone from here.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you’ve told me. And because I’ve never trusted myself.”

I leaned against him, willing myself not to fall asleep. “I trust you.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know any better.”

“I do. I know a lot better than you think. But I still trust you.”

His arm fell behind me and braced me from falling back on the bed. I let myself relax. “Why do you say that, little lady?”

“Because you can taste watermelon. And that makes you special.”

When I say that friends are weird, I’m not necessarily making an observation about the people I know. Don’t get me wrong. My friends are weird. I have a grand total of three of them in the world, and each one of them is mighty strange, indeed. But I’m also counting myself in that crew. I’m a pretty strange friend, when it comes down to it.

He was gone before I woke up in the morning. So was the bottle of gin. I looked over at the chair where he had fallen asleep the night before. He had left me a note saying he’d be back in a few days to see how I was doing.

I got a text message from him two months later.


	4. Do You Mean Which, or What?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it's good not to throw all semantics aside.

A lot of people ask me what kinds of jobs I’m looking for. But I think they’re getting their pronouns wrong. It isn’t a matter of what job, so much as which job. For those who don’t really know the difference between which and what, let me explain.

When we’re kids, adults ask us what we want to be when we grow up. In that case, the use of “what” is fairly appropriate. It isn’t even that the doors are all open to us, it’s more that there are no doors, and we can just make up whatever we want. But then when we get older, things change. You find out you’re not very good at math, so now you can’t be an engineer. And you can’t run, or you have asthma, so pretty much all athletics are no longer options 

As we go through high school and college, the field narrows and narrows, until we’re forced into choosing only one thing. Which, for most people, is just fine.

But then, throw in the M-gene, and things get even more complicated. Regular work in our fields is not really an option when the competition includes those who lack these special abilities.

And here comes the semantics. My career advisor asked me what kind of job I want. I was tempted to tell her that I’d like a position as a pediatric nurse in a large hospital, somewhere on the East coast. Instead, I went into semantics with her. “You mean which job?”

She paused. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, it isn’t like there are many options for me, are there? So, just let me know WHICH places are willing to hire me, and I’ll choose from those. Hopefully, there will be something in the nursing field.” I sat forward in my chair and tried to pretend I was anything but completely fed up with the system.

“Aah, I see. Well, I must say, it has been somewhat difficult to find a place that will hire someone of your genetic persuasion.” A mutant. “Not that I have anything against your kind. I mean, we all have our place in this world, right?” Just not in this country. Not in this state, not in this city.

“Right.”

“And you have a great recommendation from your last employer.” Her custom manicure clicked on the keys as she typed some information into her database. It would likely come up empty, as usual. “Are you willing to take a pay cut?”

“I don’t care. I just need enough money for rent and food.”

“And public transportation?”

“I don’t have a car. I had to sell my bicycle last week to pay my phone bill, so yeah. I need it to be on public transportation.”

“I see.” She clicked away for a little while. “And are you willing to relocate?”

“I can move anywhere.”

“Relocate out of state?” Her face seemed to light up. She found something.

“I’ll relocate anywhere as long as it’s in my field. What do you have?”

She looked a little apologetic. Well, maybe not apologetic, but definitely unsure. “There’s a clinic in western Alberta that’s in desperate need of nurses. And they will accept M-gene applicants.”

“Western Alberta? Canada?”

She nodded. “Pay is better than your last employer, and they have a relocation allowance, as well. Do you want me to send them your resume?”

Canada. I’d have to go back to Canada. I’ve done worse. “Yeah. go ahead and send it.”

  


_We need to talk._

_Nice to hear from you, too. What happened to “a few days.”_

_I got busy. We need to talk._

_Yeah, you already told me. How was the scotch?_

_The scotch IS fantastic. That’s part of what we need to talk about._

_Still?_

_I’m coming down there._

_I’m moving._

_Where?_

_Alberta. Small town near Peace River._

_You can’t go there._

_It’s in a clinic, and they’re offering me 25% more than what I was making at St. Theresa’s._

_You can’t go._

_I’m going._

_When?_

_Next week. End of the month. Probably head out of here on Thursday. Look, I need a job, and this is the only place that would have me._

_Jim? Are you there? Did you get busy again_

_Whatever. I’ll send you my address when I get there. Unless you want to help me move._

 

 

He didn’t come to help me move. I could see that in his face as soon as I opened the door. “How did you get in?”

“Smoking lady.” He grunted. I don’t think I’d ever seen him this angry. “Get inside.” He pushed pointed into my apartment. “Now.”

I obeyed. Of course, I did. He not only smelled like and had the aura of danger, but he was the one person in the world I trusted aside from my mother. And if there was something I didn’t want to jeopardize in my life, it was my friendship with Jim.

You’d understand if you had the M-gene.

“You’re not moving there.” He strode past me and sat on my chair. “It’s a bad idea.”

I closed and locked the door. “Yeah, well, being kicked out of my apartment, living through a winter on the streets, and dying of starvation is a bad idea, too. I don’t know if you’re up on the news of the poorer side of the world, but people like you and me don’t really qualify for public assistance.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“And you know danger. Yes, I understand. It’s a wild world up there in the bitumen sands. Full of oil and refineries, and dinosaur bones.”

“And men.”

“Well, yeah.” It wasn’t as if that had been on my mind. “It’s a small clinic, and I’ll be working in the back as an assistant. Not like a big hospital full of men.”

“Doesn’t matter. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

I put some water into the electric kettle and turned it on. “Why didn’t you just send me a text message, anyway? Or call. Phones work. Much less dramatic.”

“I broke my phone.”

“Someone tried to get it from you again?”

“No, I threw it against the wall and it broke.” He crossed his legs and leaned back in my chair. “I’m not sayin’ that you can’t go because I don’t trust you, Lucy.”

“I know.” I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “You don’t trust all the men up there. What would happen if I spit on the ground and one of them walked through it, or something like that, right?”

“No. That’s not even the half of it.” He looked up at me with a serious and intense expression. “That bottle you gave me - the one with your spit in it? It still tastes like scotch. I still can’t bring myself to wash the shirt I was wearin’ the last time I was here.”

“That’s not possible. It wears off.” Most of my things were already packed in boxes and bags, so I kicked a box of books over close to the chair and sat down. “It wears off after a few days.”

“It doesn’t.” He glanced over at me and then looked out the window. “What did you mean that last time when you said I was special ‘cause I could taste watermelon?”

My face flushed. I had forgotten about that. Or maybe the alcohol had conveniently erased that part of my memory. Either way, it wasn’t something I’d intended on telling anyone, let alone the one person involved.

“Oh, that was nothing.” I waved him off. The kettle started whistling, so I got up to go turn it off, but he grabbed me by the wrist.

“It wasn’t nothing. And I’ve been trying to wrap my thick skull around it, but there’s this cloud in my way.” He looked up at me, and there was a flash in his eye I hadn’t noticed before. Oh, I’d seen the feral side, and I had seen his protective side, but this was something between those two that I couldn’t really place.

“I need to turn off the kettle,” I told him weakly, taking a step closer to his chair.

“I got drunk.” He said, ignoring my protest. “I don’t get drunk, and I got drunk. You can ask Kurt. He helped me through the worst hangover of my life.”

“I don’t know Kurt.” The kettle was at a full whistle.

“None of ‘em had ever seen me drunk. Drugged, half-dead, berserker rage, yes. But my healing factor doesn’t allow me to become inebriated. But your scotch did it.”

I just stood there for a full minute, looking down into his face. He still had his hand around my wrist, and the kettle was screaming behind me. But I couldn’t hear anything, and I couldn’t feel anything. “Is it out of your system now?”

“I don’t know. I was going to wait a little longer before coming back, but with you moving…” He let out a long breath and released my arm. “Go turn that damn thing off. I’d say it was giving me a headache, but I don’t get headaches.”

“I’ll make you some coffee.”

“I can’t eat or drink anything you touch.” He shook his head and started staring out the window again.

“I… I don’t have any real coffee.”

“Tea is fine.”

Now, I’m certainly not the most clever girl in the world. I never pretended to be, and I will never claim to be good at solving puzzles. However, I could put a few of these pieces together and reason out a few things. First, some of my powers had become stronger. How else would the scotch last that long? And if those powers are stronger, then it’s possible whatever it is that causes this weird attraction in me must be stronger, too. That whole incident at college suddenly became far more grim in my mind.

I unplugged the kettle and poured out two cups of tea.

So, then it stood to reason that Jim was affected by me, too. And that’s why it took him two months to get back to me.

I just stood there in the kitchen, mugs in hands, processing this information. I don’t know how long I was there, but I didn’t snap out of my trance until Jim came up in front of me and snapped his fingers in my face.

“I asked if you were alright, but I guess this is as good an answer as any.”

“It affected you. I’m… I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” I set the mugs on the counter and took a step back.

“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know. And in a way, it was a good thing. I’m sure with anyone else, it would have been much more serious.” He took one of the mugs and sipped at the tea.

“Tea needs three minutes to steep.”

“Yeah, well, I need something in my hands so I’m not tempted to close the distance between us.”

“Oh.”

“I’m joking. I’ve got a little more self-control than that.” He laughed. “But I do think you need to throw away this notion of moving to the middle of nowhere, Canada. Population: men.”

“I need a job, Jim. I am almost out of money, and I can’t live on the streets. I wouldn’t survive.”

“No, I want you to come with me somewhere. It’s pretty safe, and there are some people who can help you. We need to figure out the extent of your abilities and get them under control before they get the better of us all.” He gulped down his tea and crossed his arms. “That was terrible, by the way.”

“It was weak tea. Probably mostly hot water.” I reached past him and took my own mug. “And I can’t go with you.”

“Mostly hot water, and yes you can. We’ve got a place for you. I’ve talked to a couple of my friends already, and…”

“I’m not going. Recently I’ve learned that my place is nowhere near the hero community. I’m a small operator working out of an office here or there, trying to suppress whatever this gene is that’s activated inside of me. So, the idea of going to someplace where I’ll be studied and analyzed and taught how to use it for the greater good has no appeal to me.”

He nodded and smiled. “I thought you might say as much.”

“So, why are you here, then, Jim? You’ve delivered the bad news, you’ve told me about this alternative that you knew I wouldn’t accept, and now I want to know the truth.”

We were back to the question of which again. Which of these limited options was the one he would pick? Which thing did he want me, or would insist that I do? Which version of my own fate would he insist upon?

“I’m going with you.” He stated.

“You’ll help me move?”

“No, I’m going with you as your husband.”

Okay, so maybe I should have known that there might be a “what” out there I hadn’t considered.


	5. The Guard Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road trip out of California, up to Washington.

The thing you have to understand is that sometimes the best solution isn’t the most obvious one. And it’s certainly not the easiest one.

The other thing you have to understand is that people are always just trying to do their best. Whether it’s good or evil, pretty much everyone I’ve met has just been muddling through as well as they can with whatever it was they were doing.

Jim isn’t an animal. He’s a person who just happens to fall into my lap soaked in blood and sweat and urine more often than most people would. But that’s the best solution to his particular problem.

Think of it this way. If you have a dog, and it’s been trained as an attack dog, you’ve set it up for a certain kind of life. But then, if you have a baby and it attacks the baby, you’ve got three choices. You can either put that dog down and end its life, you can give it away to become someone else’s problem, or you can train it to protect the baby and never attack it again. In fact, you can train it to protect all kinds of babies, and it will use that natural aggression you’ve fostered toward a better purpose.

And it might just take out a kidnapper, murderer, or rapist or three thousand along the way.

That doesn’t make it a bad dog. Sometimes it makes it a hero. But kind of a scary hero.

Unless you know him. And you play with him and love him and see that the innocent puppy is still in there, waiting to be called out.

It’s just something to think about as I retell this part of my story. ‘Cause as great and innocent as my life had been up until that point, everything was about to change.

Starting with a phone call to my mom.

“No, mom, we’re not getting married. Please don’t call Bradley and Carmen, or Uncle Dan.”

Jim picked up a box marked “books” and another marked “dishes” and carried them past me. “Hi, mom,” he shouted as he walked out of the apartment. I watched him as he headed down the hall toward the stairs.

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s just going to go with me to help me get settled and make sure I’m safe. But, since there are so many men in the town, and it’s a pretty small town, he’s going to tell them all we’re married so they leave me alone.”

Conversations with my mother almost always consisted of me telling her some kind of news, and then her running through every conceivable outcome of my decision before she decided if it was a good idea or not. I was desperately hoping she could come down on my side of this issue.

“No, mom, it’s in Canada, not Wyoming. That’s why he’s coming with me. ‘Cause he’s from Canada, y’know?” Right on cue, Jim came marching back down the hallway to come and get another box. He stopped by me and held his hand out toward the phone. “Hold on, mom, I think he wants to talk to you.”

“Hello, Ms. Williams? Just wanted to tell you about the kind of place where Lucy’s going to be working. It’s not a very pretty town, and to say that it’s rough out there is putting it lightly. The winters will be worse than she’s ever had, and the ratio of men to women is about twenty to one. Now, you know me. I’ve got my own skill set, and if there’s one thing I’m determined to do, it’s to keep her safe.”

He leaned against the counter and crossed his ankles as he listened to her talking. “No, ma’am. I’ve been working hard for the past 20 years to keep them away from her. And I’ll keep doing the same. Believe me, if she wasn’t such a promising nurse, I would have just packed her up and sent her back home a decade ago. But as she pointed out, and rightly so, she’s got her own life to live. And to be honest, this town is in need of someone like her.”

Jim winked at me and smiled like he’d just sold a pet fox to a rooster. “Right, here she is.”

He handed the phone back to me, then patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll get the rest of these loaded into the truck.”

It had all seemed perfect. A little awkward, to be sure, but as perfect a solution to my situation as it could be. And even as I promised my mom to be careful and do whatever Jim suggested, and to try and suppress my abilities as much as possible, I felt excited about what I was moving into.

Jim took out four more boxes. They towered over his head as he carried two in each arm. Anyone who didn’t know him might think he looked funny - a little guy carrying out some huge, heavy boxes. But then again, nobody was paying attention to us thanks to a well-timed smell of a burning building coming from down the road.

I have some uses for my talents that aren’t entirely innocent, as well.

“That’s it, then,” he said, picking up my two remaining suitcases.

“Mom said you should come to dinner next time you’re in New England.” I looked around the place. I hadn’t cleaned or anything, but Jim insisted he knew someone who could come and take care of it for me. “Are you sure it’s okay to just leave the key on the counter here?”

“Believe me,” he said, ushering me out the door. “I’ve made arrangements for all of it. And your deposit should be back in your account by Monday.”

Conversation heading out of California was mostly light banter. He grilled me about what I’d been doing for the past two months. I asked him a bunch of unanswered questions about where he had been, and when we both ran out of the mundane, useless conversation, we started talking about the important stuff.

“Things are getting more complicated, Lucy.” He turned off the cd player. There weren’t any good radio stations in the area, so we had been listening to Steppenwolf’s Greatest Hits, but that was getting a little old and noisy for conversation. He never once glanced over at me, but kept his gaze firmly on the road ahead. “First, your little gift as you call it isn’t quite as harmless as it used to be.”

“Why? Because it lasts longer?”

“That’s part of it, but you’ve got something else going on in you, too. And it’s something that I think I should keep an eye on for a while.”

There was something else he wasn’t telling me. He had the same look as he always did when his mind was running through all of his data. Certain things he’d tell me, other things he’d consider to be too dangerous. It was always the case. Still, it didn’t matter.

“So, what would you have done if I said I would turn down the job and find something in the Bay Area? Nothing?”

He didn’t answer.

“Does this mean you’ve had someone watching me in California?” He ran his tongue over the front of his teeth and shifted his jaw. More things he didn’t want to tell me. “Or is it that someone up where I’m going, is interested in having a pet mutant who can make their liverwurst taste like chocolate pudding?”

“Why would anyone want liverwurst to taste like anything but what it is. Nature’s most perfect food? How dare you suggest such a thing.”

“You’re gross.”

“More than you know.” He put his right arm up across the back of the seat between us.

“No, I know. You think I don’t, but I do. Just because I’m not like you doesn’t mean I don’t understand what you’re like.” I slouched down in the seat and braced my knees on the dashboard. “I’ve seen the news, and I was there in the aftermath of one of those battles you and your friends were fighting. Also, I’ve patched you up and washed liters of blood off of you. I know that wasn’t yours.”

“Lucy…”

“Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but if you do, that’s okay, too. From the time I saw that school, I knew what kind of people might be in there. And even back then, with your claws and that zipper thing you did, I knew.” I shrugged. “We need guard dogs. We need people who can chase away the demons and horrible evils that are out there.”

“Are you sure you want to know? It’s pretty scary.”

I shrugged. “Not really. I mean, it’s not really scary. I think of it this way; there’s no honor in letting evil take over the world just so you don’t get your hands dirty. I know there’s a lot of gray area between good and evil, but if there’s a real threat to innocent people who don’t deserve a horrible fate, then someone has to go out there and face that threat.”

“There are threats. I can say that much.” He spoke softly and let his right hand slide down off of the seat. I picked it up and brought it into my lap, then traced the back of his knuckles with my fingers.

“Then I feel proud that one of these brave people has decided to come and protect me. I don’t need to know what you’re protecting me from, other than the men in that town. But you do need to know that I’ll be there to support you as much as you’ve been here to support me. Probably even more.”

He turned his hand over and held mine.

“Even if space ninjas attack,” I added.

He smiled. “Space ninjas?”

“Yeah, well, you’ve fought ninjas, and you fight things from space, so it only makes sense that there would be space ninjas, too.” I shrugged. I was desperate to lighten the conversation again. The truth was, there were so many times I’d felt someone watching me as if they were just waiting to jump in and claim their prize. Part of it was normal paranoia, but there’s a truth in the saying that until all mutants are safe, no mutants are safe.

“Well, if any space ninjas come, I’ll make sure they don’t hurt you, okay?”

“If they come, they probably won’t be coming for me. They’re coming for you. And I’ll throw them off the scent before they can even get near us, okay?”

“What if they don’t have noses?” He started laughing.

“Every creature has a nose of some kind. Or else, they wouldn’t make it as ninjas. How can powerful creatures be if they have noses? Even sharks have noses.”

“Well, if a shark comes to attack us in this moving van, I’m sure I can figure out a way to fight it.” Jim gave my hand a squeeze, then took it away to drive with it again.

The mood was lighter, a lot of my stress from moving and going into the unknown was relieved, and I had this strange assurance that my best friend was ready to be my guard dog, as well. Yeah, I knew things were going to get bad. They always did. But at least now, I wouldn’t be facing it alone.

**  
  
**

We stopped for gas in Medford, and again outside Portland. Jim said he would drive the whole way, which was nice ‘cause the only car I’d ever driven was my mom’s old Ford Escort stick shift. Driving a large truck with Jim’s motorcycle on the trailer behind us was a little intimidating.

“I’ve got some business to take care of in Seattle,” he told me as we pulled out of the gas station in Wilsonville, Oregon. “We can stop at a motel in Renton for the night. You look like you’re gonna need some sleep.”

“Business?”

“Just a little something. I’ll take the bike off the trailer and ride it into the city. Then you can have the room to yourself.”

We got back on the highway and into traffic that was getting heavier by the hour. I never ask him about his business. It’s not that I don’t want to know, but it’s just something I know he likes to keep me out of. And I respect that. “Sounds good. Maybe we can find one near a grocery store. I want to do some shopping before we cross the border.”

He nodded.

“You’re not going to sleep tonight?”

“I will. Just not right away. You’ll be okay by yourself for a few hours.”

We arrived in Renton around 7:30, booked a single with a double bed, and I brought my things into the room. Jim wasn’t going to sleep. I could tell by his demeanor.

“I’ll be back in a few hours.” He took off his jacket and threw it on the chair in the corner. “I’ve got a key, so lock up when you get back from your shopping.” He rustled my hair and paused for a moment with his hand on my head. “Don’t take too long. I’ll probably panic if you’re not here when I get back.”

I smiled. “Don’t worry. I just want a few things for the road trip and some stuff that might be hard to find in Canada.”

After he left, I went over to the window and watched him as he unchained his bike, rolled it off of the trailer, and headed back onto the highway.


	6. Over the Border

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparations must be made before crossing the Rockies.

Confession time. I’d never slept with anyone before. Well, my brother and I had to share a bed at Uncle Dan’s house when were were kids, but that didn’t really count. My point is that I had never shared a bed with another adult before.

So, when Jim came in and laid down next to me on top of the covers, the panic sensors in my brain kicked in. I could tell it was him, and that he’d just showered, but I still woke with a start, jerked myself back, and fell out of the bed with all the grace of a skateboarding giraffe.

“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning over the bed.

I was sprawled out on the floor, I’d bumped my head on the side table, and my foot was still hooked in the sheets. “No.”

“Come here, girl.” He held out his hand for me, and when I took it, he hauled all 188 pounds of my fat ass back up onto the bed as if I was a featherweight. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” I could tell he was laughing, even with my eyes closed, wincing from the pain in my head.

“Yeah, well, I’m just a little skittish, I guess.”

“Not such a bad thing considering what we have to do today.” He put his hand on my head and felt where I’d hit it. “You’re gonna have a bump there.”

“Ya think?” I looked up at him. He didn’t smell like booze or blood, so that was a good sign. “What time did you get in?”

“Does it matter?”

I got up and shrugged into my cardigan. “Not really. I guess I’m more curious if you got any sleep.”

“Well, I was going to take a little 20-minute nap, but your acrobatic reaction to me kind of woke me up.”

“Yeah, well, it woke me up, too.” I grabbed my clothes and went into the bathroom to shower and change. “I hope you didn’t use all the hot water.”

The shower smelled like him. There wasn’t a spot of blood anywhere, so I assumed his business didn’t involve anything violent. But there were hairs in the soap, hair in the sink, in the shower drain, and on one of the towels. His shaving kit was sitting open on the counter, and I could see the glint of a straight razor just under the zipper. The whole room smelled of a spicy, earthy aftershave.

I showered, combed and dried my hair, and stuffed my belly into some jeans that were a good size too small for me, then covered up the rolls with an oversized sweatshirt.

When I went back into the room, he was sprawled out across the bed, sleeping lightly. I packed my things, put on my socks and shoes, and sat down in the chair next to the window.

His eyes opened. “Feel better?”

“Yeah. The bump on my head already feels about the size of a golf ball.”

“Can’t see it at all.” He pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed.”

“So, what are we doing today? I mean, why is it a good thing that I’m skittish?”

He huffed. “Let’s get going. I’ll fill you in once we’re on the road again.”

****  
  
  


Even with a full inventory of all of my things, the letter from my employer, and having all of our paperwork in order (with Jim’s Canadian passport), the border crossing took us over an hour. It was a nice day, though, and there were picnic benches out back near the inspection stations.

“So, what is it you want to ask?” He leaned over the bench and looked me directly in the eyes. “You’ve been quiet far too long, and at least four times you’ve opened your mouth to say something, and came up short of a question.”

I bit my lip. “I’ve promised myself not to ask, and I’m not going to break that promise now.”

He smiled. “This is why I like you so much.”

I shrugged. “I try.”

“And that’s the other reason I like you so much. ‘Cause you actually try while so many just let things happen.”

“Anyway,” I brought up the address of our apartment in Peace River on google maps and handed him my phone, “here’s where our new apartment is. It’s in a pretty big complex, but pretty convenient to both the clinic and public transportation.”

He looked down at my phone and scowled. “We’re not living there.”

“Oh yeah? Where are we going to live? In the truck?”

“Nope. I’ve made arrangements. I found us a house. That’s one of the things I had to do last night.” He handed my phone back to me and sat back with his hands folded together on the tabletop, obviously proud of himself.

“Bought, or rented?” I asked, tucking my phone into my pocket.

“Which would make me sound better?”

“Rented,” I told him shortly.

“Yeah, rented. I rented us a house.”

“But really you bought it, right?”

“Yup.”

“That’s crazy. How are we going to afford it on my salary alone?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. “Oh, please, don’t tell me.”

“Then I won’t. But we aren’t going to afford this on your salary alone.”

“You found a job, too?”

One of the border officers came up to us, handed Jim some paperwork, then snapped to attention and saluted him. “Here you are, sir, it’s an honor meeting you.”

Jim nodded and smiled at the man. “I look forward to working with you the future, Davis,” he told the guard. The officer went back to the main building and Jim looked back at me. “Are you ready to go?” He stood up, came around to my side of the table, and held his hand out

“No WAY!” I took his hand and stood. “You’re a freakin’ MOUNTIE!?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Well, I called a friend who called a friend, and found out there’s a need for someone with my skill set near where we’ll be living. So, I thought, why not make it all official, and take this job. I’ll be working in the national parks near there. It’ll make things a lot safer for you and easier for me if you’re married to someone in law enforcement.”

“That’s… can you even do that? I mean, with your past and who and what we are?”

He opened my door for me. “Like I said, I know someone who was looking for someone like me. I shook my head and turned to get into the truck. A hand on my shoulder stopped me. “No, wait. There’s one more thing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. “Like I said, we should make this all official.”

Three rings. Two gold bands, and one engagement ring set with an opal flanked by two rubies. “I know you don’t like diamonds.”

“Yeah.” I was completely dumbstruck. Sure, this was his idea, and yes, I went along with it, but when I agreed to it, I hadn’t thought about what kind of money he might be spending on me.

He helped me into the truck, then went around to the other side and got in the driver’s seat. For a few moments, we just sat there. I was staring at my rings, not quite ready to put them on, and he just stared out at the road. Finally, he took a deep breath, put his ring on his finger and turned the key in the ignition.

I put the rings on my finger and buckled my seatbelt.

“So, are you going to change your name?” He asked.

“To match yours? Do you think I should?”

He shrugged. “Depends. It’s not like you can’t change it back later.”

“Do you want me to start calling you Logan?”

“No, I like Jim. Nobody but you calls me Jim.” He smiled. “You can make up pet names for me if you like. I might call you little lady again.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and there’s one more thing I’d like you to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Mask my scent. We’ll be driving through the mountains soon.”

****  
  


I had never seen Jim so on edge. All of his senses were piqued. He drove with the windows down, the radio off, and his eyes darted all over the treelines as we made our way into the mountains. “These aren’t so bad. It’s when we get up into the Rockies that’s when I gotta be careful.”

“This is why you’re wearing so much aftershave?”

He sniffed. “Wanted to smell good for you, too. I’ve never had a lady wear my ring before.”

“Now you’re just blowing smoke.” I was beaming inside. “So, I’ll mask your scent when you tell me. How long do you want it to last?”

“Depends. How long can you make it last?”

I thought for a moment. “Oh, I dunno. Maybe twelve hours? I know I can make it last eight ‘cause that time I found you in the construction trash, it lasted for eight.”

His eyes went wide. “That… should be fine.”

“You’ll still smell like aftershave.”

“That’s fine. As long as I don’t smell like me under it.”

“And I have to hold your hand.”

“What?”

“I gotta touch you - just for a few minutes. It would work better if I touch closer to your sweat glands, but that might be a bit of a distraction while you’re driving. So, just holding your hand should be fine. And once the scent is set on you, that’s all you’ll sweat out for eight to twelve hours.” I held out my left hand, and he took it. Almost as soon as he did, I could feel him relax.

“You have this effect on everyone you touch?”

“What, changing their scent? No, only when I want it to happen. It was easy the first time ‘cause you had open wounds and I could just put a little bit of me right into your bloodstream.”

“No, not that. I mean… nevermind.”

“Okay.” I felt him run his finger across the ring I was wearing. He was still nervous. “What are you afraid is out here?”

“What? Yeah, I guess he’s a what. And I don’t know if he’s here or not, but I don’t want to take the chance of him finding out about you.”

“Aah. Yeah. Creed.”

“You know him?”

“I told you, I read the news.”

“Yeah, so maybe it’s best if we keep silent through the mountains.”

“Doesn’t your heartbeat give you away?” I asked. I could feel his pulse through my wrist. He always had this same rhythm, even when he was sick or agitated. There was an unmistakable strength in his blood.

“It might.”

“Want me to fix that, too?”

His eyes widened. “You can do that?”

“Well, it won’t be pleasant for you, but yeah, I can.”

“Darling, I live my life in the world of “unpleasant.” Seriously, how bad can it be?”

 


	7. Peace on the River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They get to Peace River and start trying to figure out how this life is going to work.

I ended up driving part of the way through the mountains. I had known that it would make things awkward and unpleasant for him, but distracting him to the point where he felt unable to drive? I hadn’t expected that.

Still, it had worked. As I drove at a snail’s pace up and through the Canadian Rockies, he remained curled up in a ball in the passenger’s seat. His heart was racing, his profuse sweating smelled like baking bread overlaced with that spicy aftershave, and he kept grumbling about how it was a good thing I was so innocent, or there’s no telling what he might do.

The safest thing was to have me drive. ME. The one who had only driven one tiny sub-compact car before. Driving a moving truck towing his precious motorcycle up through snowy mountains was not something with which I was even remotely comfortable.

Alright, so we were actually at the point of going DOWN the snowy mountains when he was at his worst.

As soon as we reached the foothills, he demanded we pull over. My knuckles were sore from gripping the steering wheel so tightly, I didn’t argue with him at all. Before the truck had come to a complete stop, he was out the door and into the woods, running like a racehorse.

“Great. Well, I know not to do that again.” I got out and stretched, then walked around to the back of the truck to check and make sure everything was still secure.

I waited by the side of the truck for a while, listening to the cars racing by, the wind blowing in the trees, and the sound of Jim blazing a path through the underbrush. There was a distinct “snikt” sound from back in the woods, and then what sounded like someone retching. Guilt washed over me as I reached the back of the truck. There was a reason I never made myself look attractive. There was a good reason why I never wore make-up or perfume, why I cut my own hair in a stupid-looking chopped style, and why I never bothered to lose the weight I had gained in college. And that reason was, at that time, trying to run off the confusion I had caused.

As I came around the back of the motorcycle trailer, I felt his arms wind around my waist. “Wait,” he breathed into the back of my neck. “Wait like this for just a minute. I need to catch my breath.”

I nodded. “I said it would be unpleasant.”

“No, that wasn’t unpleasant. That was excruciatingly pleasant.” He rubbed his stubbled chin against the back of my shoulder. “There’s a difference. I can handle unpleasant, no problem.”

“Oh.”

“You’re not allowed to do that to anyone else,” He growled.

“I wasn’t planning on it?”

“Not until we can get it under control.”

I could taste the copper of blood in the air as he held me still. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I think it’s almost out of my system. Or at least, at a manageable level, anyway.”

Looking over my shoulder, I stared down into his wild black hair. “Do you need me to drive?” I whispered.

“I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute.” His hands locked around my waist and he pressed his face harder into my back.

As I felt his breathing slow, I brought one hand up to rest on his. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault.” He pulled himself away and sat on the edge of the trailer. “I just wasn’t ready for that. I’m used to hurting and feeling pain.”

I sighed and went back to the truck. A few minutes after I’d settled myself in the passenger seat, he came in, started the truck up, and we were off again.

“Only a few more hours and we’ll be home.” He told me.

I didn’t know what to say. I could still feel the tension coming off of him, and I knew it was at least 50% my fault.

But then he reached over and took my hand, lacing our fingers together. “It’s going to be okay. Really, compared to what I’ve been through before, this is nothing. I’m just not used to feeling so much good.” His shoulders relaxed and he rested his elbow next to the window. “Besides, we’re going to Peace River. If that isn’t a place that promises a little healing, I don’t know what is.”

  
  
  


It was a small, two-story house, set away from the town; back near the woods off of Range Road 213. There was a double garage on the side with a breezeway connecting it to the side door. Off on one side, there was a vegetable garden and apple trees.

If it weren’t for that fact that it was nowhere near any kind of public transportation, and at least four miles from the clinic, I’d say it was just about as perfect as you could get.

“How am I going to get to work?” I asked as I carried my suitcase up to the front door.

“I’ll drive you.”

“Every day? What about when you get busy with other work?” I set my suitcase down and headed back to the truck.

Jim had just unchained his motorcycle and was wheeling it over to the garage. “I won’t. And if I have to stay late at work, I’ll have one of the other officers give you a ride home. Or I just won’t stay late at work.”

“You have that kind of luxury?”

He came back to the truck, unlocked the back, and lifted up the door. “Yup. Like I said, I’m going in with my particular skill set, and that’s all they really need me for.”

“You make it sound like you’re some kind of hitman.” I reached up and pulled down the closest box to me.

“I’ll get this. You go on inside and look the place over.” He waved me away from the truck. “And not quite a hitman, more like a tracker. People get lost out here. A lot of people. And someone’s gotta go out and find them.” He threw me the keys. “Green one is the front door. There’s no security alarm set up yet, so you can just go on in.”

I reached for the box again. Jim growled at me. “Fine.”

Adjusting my backpack, I went back to my suitcase, opened the front door, and brought it inside.

Now, there’s one thing to keep in mind. I’d never lived in a house before. In fact, I had only been inside, maybe, three houses in my whole life. I’d always lived in an apartment, and all of my friends had been in apartments. Those who had houses, weren’t allowed to bring mutants home. So, being in a house that I could call my home was really odd.

There was easily five times as much space as I had been used to, maybe more. Downstairs, there was what could be a living room, the dining room, and a kitchen with a breakfast area in the back corner.

I brought my suitcase upstairs to look around. There was one master bedroom with a bathroom attached to it, and a tiny guest room, plus another bathroom at the top of the stairs. And a wooden door opened up to stairs leading to the attic.

“So much space,” I whispered.

I put my suitcase in the smaller room and went back downstairs. Jim had just brought in a couple of boxes marked “bedroom”, carrying one on each arm. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

“You’ve deserved it all along, Lucy. You just never had your due. Now, bedroom’s upstairs?”

“Yeah. Here, let me get one of those.”

“No, I’ve got these. You get the cooler out of the back and get those groceries you bought put away. As soon as I’m finished with the bedroom things, I’ll start on the kitchen.”

I did as he suggested and brought in the cooler and the bags of things I’d bought in Renton and took them into the kitchen. “I bought a bunch of beef jerky for you,” I shouted. “I know they have jerky up here, too, but this is the hot mustard kind that you--” When I turned around, he was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, staring at me. “What?”

“We’re sharing the bedroom, Lucy. I’m not letting you hole yourself up in that tiny room.”

“I was just… I mean since you bought the house, I thought you should have the bigger room.”

He leaned against the door jamb, arms still crossed. “We shared a room in your tiny apartment. Three times. We shared that motel room, we just traveled 26 hours together in a moving truck, we’re supposed to be married, and now you decide you can’t share a bedroom with me?”

Well, since he had put it that way, “Sounds kind of dumb, right?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll unpack all our things in the bedroom, and the spare room can be used for your sewing and my weap-... my collection.”

I went back to unpacking the grocery bags.

“Oh, and the furniture should be delivered tomorrow morning,” he shouted from halfway up the stairs.  

  
  
  


We went to lunch at a chinese restaurant in town. It seemed to be the place where a lot of the locals liked to eat, and as he had told me that morning “the sooner we make ourselves known, the better.”

“Well, they certainly don’t want you to starve out here,” I told him across my plate overfilled with beef and broccoli.

“You’ve never been out in Alberta, have you?” He asked. “This is where I’m from, way back when.” He looked up at me and smiled. “And no, they don’t want you to go hungry. You think this is a lot? You should go to the steakhouse.”

“You’re from Alberta? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. Lots of stuff you don’t know. Still, you love me, anyways.” He winked at me.

My first thought was that he could really lay it on thick when he wanted to. Not just the arrogance, but this whole show he was delivering in front of everyone in town. Or at least as many people from a town of 7,000 as could fit in a Chinese restaurant.

“Yeah. Lots of stuff you don’t know about me, too. But that’s probably why you love me.”

I have always loved it when I make him laugh. He has these beautiful fangs that seem to strike fear in the hearts of men, desire in the hearts of women, and admiration in the hearts of kids. As for my heart, it never really paid attention to the teeth after it had noticed the soul behind them.

We finished eating, got the rest of our lunch in to-go boxes, and decided to head down to the river for a walk. As soon as we were out of the door, he took my hand in his and stuck it in his pocket. “It’s a little chilly today,” he told me.

At first, I thought the people in town didn’t like newcomers. The most anyone would do is just nod at us, maybe smile, and then go about their business. Even when we asked directions, the lady at the gas station looked at Jim a little funny before telling us where the park was on the other side of the river.

“It’s just their way. Nodding is like saying hello,” he told me.

We went across to the park, and then down near the banks of the river. Jim let go of my hand and took a few steps away. “It’s a good place to lose yourself out here. Small towns are really the safest place for people like us. Tell me, did you feel any other mutants around town as we walked?”

I shook my head. “Not one. Then again, if there are any, it’s probably just one or two, and they’re not likely to come walking around town if there’s a social stigma against mutants here.”

Jim picked up a rock and put it in his pocket. “There’s social stigma everywhere. But at least out here, they reserve final judgment until you’ve proven yourself one way or another.”

To avoid any more discussion that might get me curious to the point of asking some questions I might regret, I decided to change the subject. “So, do you like walking around as someone’s husband? You seem to be playing the part pretty well.”

“No, not somebody’s husband. Just yours.” He looked down and kicked loose another rock from the grass, picked it up, and put it in his pocket. “Can’t think of anyone else I would do this with. They’d all either expect too much from me, or they wouldn’t need me in the first place. Some of them both.”

“You’ve got some great friends, Jim. I read about them all the time back in Cali.”

“Friends, enemies. I’ve got loads of both. But they’re all part of the business, too.” He came over and sat next to me on the grass. “You know how you’ve got your work friends, but you can’t really be yourself around them ‘cause you work with them?”

Honestly, I didn’t. I think he could see that in my face.

“Aah, yeah, well, let’s just say you’re different. You’ve never expected too much from me. You’ve never made a judgment about me for the things I’ve had to do and the way I do them. And I know that tomorrow when we wake up, you’re not going to ask me to put my life on the line. You always let me make those decisions.”

“I guess. Then again, we haven’t been living together that long.”

He laid back in the dry grass and looked up at the sky. It was starting to cloud over, threatening rain that might turn into frost or snow overnight. “Nope. But still I know that I could live better with you than anyone I’ve known so far. And I’ve lived two lifetimes.”

I turned around and laid with my head on his stomach. “Yeah, but lifetimes are all relative. It doesn’t matter how long you live, it’s more important what you do with the time you’ve got. So, if I live to be 100, I just want to know that I’ve helped as many people as I can. Maybe I’ll never use my mutant powers again to help people, and maybe I’ll find a place where I can be just what someone needs. But I still want to be that savior you told me I would be when I was a kid.”

He reached over and took my hand. “Lucy?”

“Hmmm.”

“Don’t ever change.”

 


	8. Peter and the Wolv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter comes to bring Jim some of his things, and to meet this girl Jim's decided to protect.

There are always things about moving that you forget. Such as how long it takes to get everything unpacked, and how many things you need to buy when you first get to a new place; a mop and broom, condiments, cleaning supplies to replace the ones I’d left at my old apartment.

Jim wasn’t concerned in the least. While I was scrambling to get things organized and unpack this or that, he just sat on the living room floor playing around with the fireplace. When he was finished with that, he went out to the garage to tinker with his motorcycle.

And then the time schedule of it all had me stressed, too. We had arrived on Friday evening, the furniture he had ordered for the living room and dining room arrived Saturday afternoon. I would start work Monday morning at 7:00, and I hadn’t even figured out where the clinic was in town.

Sunday, just as I was finished cleaning up after breakfast, I heard a vehicle pull up to the house.

“I’ll get that,” Jim said.

I wiped my hands on my jeans and went to look out the kitchen window. There was a silver SUV parked near the house with Illinois plates and a bright yellow racing stripe running down the passenger side of the car. The door opened and out stepped a familiar face. Although I’d only met him once, I would never forget Jim’s friend from the school who had ushered my mother and I into the professor’s office.

The old friends greeted each other with smiles, handshakes, and then the other man hugged Jim, patted him on the shoulder, and went with him around to the back of the vehicle.

I nearly tripped over myself as I rushed over to the front door.

“She’s inside. Sorry we don’t have any breakfast to offer you, but I’m sure we could find something if you’re hungry.” Jim had unloaded two wooden crates, and the other man already had four in his arms.

“I can take those,” he said in a low, gruff voice. Jim put the crates on top of the others and reached back into the SUV.

“You’ll stay the night, though? We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“Your little lady?”

“She’s inside, like I said.”

“She’s right there, coming toward us.”

Jim spun around and smiled with his giant, toothy grin.

“Lucy! Look who’s here! You remember Peter, don’t you?”

  
  
  


When he spoke, it was with a thick Russian accent. He sat up straight in the overstuffed chair, didn’t say much when I was in the room, and I felt as if he was scoping me out the whole time I was in the living room. I made him a cup of very strong tea and set it on the coffee table in front of him, then went to sit on the sofa.

Jim was whistling while starting a fire, and when he finished, he flopped down on the sofa next to me, stretching one arm across the back, the other along the armrest. He crossed his legs, motioned around the room and smiled. “So, whaddya think?”

“This house is small. But then, so are you, so I think it suits you.” Peter told him.

“Hah! That’s what she said about her old apartment.” He turned to me. “Lucy, Peter’s one of my closest friends. I trust him more than I trust just about anyone in this world ‘cept for you.”

“Aah. Yeah. It must be nice to have people like that.” I didn’t mean for it to sound acidic, but somehow my words never came out right when I was meeting new people. It was probably one of the reasons I really didn’t have any friends. “What I meant was…”

“No, I understand. And you are right. It is very nice. It is something that not many mutants have. Most are like you and they have to hide who they are because others fear what they don’t understand.” Peter took his tea and sat back in the chair, relaxing a bit.

“I really don’t mind, though. I mean, I find other things to occupy my time. When I was working at St. Theresa’s, I would make puppets and toys for the kids in the pediatric ward. And between work and that, I didn’t do much else.”

“Meaning, she never left her apartment other than for shopping and work.” Jim’s voice was softer, and more sympathetic.

“Pretty much. I mean, I’d go to the library and check out DVDs that the kids liked, so I’d have something to talk about. I think I’ve watched just about every Disney movie, every cartoon, and every children’s TV show that’s come out since 2000, I’d do great in a pub quiz.”

The more I spoke, the more pathetic I sounded. I decided to just remove myself from the situation. “I’m gonna go get lunch started, okay?”

I got up to leave, and Jim grabbed my wrist. “We just finished breakfast, Lucy. And I want you two to get to know each other. So, don’t run away just yet.”

He looked over at Peter. “He’s just being antisocial because he doesn’t know what to do with you yet.” Jim got up from the sofa and went over to the table by the door. He picked up his wallet and keys, then took his coat off the hook. “I’m goin’ into town to get a bottle of wine. You two stay here and chat.” He came over to me and put his hand on the top of my head. “Talk. Tell him about California.”

“Jim!” I started to protest, but as soon as I called his name, I thought better on it.

He turned around. He knew exactly what I was thinking. “What?”

My shoulders relaxed. “Red. I can’t stand white wine when it’s cold out.”

After Jim had left, Peter came over to me and stared out at the motorcycle racing down the driveway. “He is happy.”

“Yeah. I think he feels at home out here.”

“No, he feels at home with you.”

  
  


That day, Peter became my third favorite person in the world. Jim and my mom are sort of tied for number one and two, so then Peter came in at number three, rising far and beyond anything my brother could do. Oh, I love my brother, don’t get me wrong, but you can love someone and not really like them very much. And after he refused time and again to give me any sort of support in my job and home hunting, he kind of slipped down my list. His wife, Carmen, actually helped me out more, giving me the name and number of a clinic she’d heard about in El Paso. But there was no way I was moving to Texas, what with their M-hunters and all.

But Peter, let me tell you about Peter. He seemed like this really serious guy. He was all frowns and suits and dark and brooding when I first met him, but I found out, he was only 20 then. He was putting on this show of the bouncer while I was 13 and impressionable.

As we talked, it turned out we liked a lot of the same music, movies, and books. We both had this seriously unbreakable code of ethics, and we both were incredibly protective of Jim.

“I still can’t believe you call him that,” Peter told me as I filled his mug with more tea. “Nobody calls him that.”

“Well, it’s better than my first name for him, and I think he likes it specifically because nobody else calls him that.”

“What was your first name for him?”

“Zipper-man. ‘Cause he could cut himself and it would heal up just like a zipper.”

Peter’s laughter nearly shook the house. “Good name. It suits him well. And what he has done, you say it does not bother you?”

“No, not really.” I sat down on the sofa and held my mug of tea. “I mean, what bothers me is that it bothers him. He carries so much blame and guilt around, but blame and guilt are only tools to learn from. And he’s learned from them, so he doesn’t need the tools anymore.”

“But it is difficult to throw away things when they are so close to you.”

“Yeah, but guilt is like toilet paper. It’s there to help you clean yourself up. You take it, you rub it real close to you, then you flush the guilt away with the rest of your shit. If you hang onto it forever, you just end up with a piece of shit stuck to you and… and I’m not sure this was the best metaphor.”

Peter laughed. “No, it’s perfect. And I understand you. And now I understand why he’s gone through all of this to help you.”

I drank my tea and set the mug on the coffee table. “I’m still not sure why, though. I mean, there doesn’t seem to be anything dangerous in this town. It’s just a small town in the middle of nowhere.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Oh, there is a danger here. You can be well assured of that. I could feel it as I drove up, myself.”

“Really? It seems like such a nice small town.”

“There is danger everywhere in this world. I live in Chicago now. It is a big city with so many people and so much crime, and still the mass murders and serial killings all happen in the outlying villages. In cities, there are a hundred thousand people around everyone who lives there. So there are always so many witnesses.” He looked down at me and shrugged. “You have moved into a small town where nobody know you.”

“And I’m M-gene positive.”

“That, too. Are you registered as that?”

“No. It didn’t seem like something I should do, even if it would have given me certain rights.”

“Good. That will make it easier with some people.”

I made more tea. We drank more tea. Jim still hadn’t returned. When I looked at my phone and saw that over an hour had passed, I sighed. “I think he’s found some business to take care of,” I said softly as I collected the mugs and took them into the kitchen. “I’ll make lunch for the two of us, and get the bath ready for him just in case.”

Peter looked at me as if I’d grown another head. “You don’t worry?”

“What’s the point in worrying? I can’t help him out there. He has to do what he has to do. All I can do is stay here and be ready when he comes back. And if nothing happens, that’s great. I mean, maybe he just stopped to get some chinese take-out or something and it’s taking longer than expected. Maybe he actually remembered that we need a mop and broom and stopped at the store. But no matter what, I’m still here, and he’s out there.” I shrugged. “Do you prefer turkey or ham sandwiches?”

Peter got up from the sofa and came into the kitchen. “Turkey. Make five. I’ll go out and find him and bring him back.”

I nodded. “I’ll get the bath started, too.”

  
  


As it turned out, he did need a bath. But it was nothing serious. There had been a bar fight, and he went in to stop it. Things got a little out of hand until the thugs realized that they were fighting with one of the new lawmen in town. By the time Peter showed up, Jim had settled in with the men who had started the fight, and was sharing their beer and peanuts.

When the two of them came home, they each wolfed down their sandwiches, then sat out on the front steps for a while, drinking the beer and wine Jim had bought.

When they were finished, Peter went out with my shopping list to get that mop and broom, the mustard that I wished we had for the sandwiches, and a few other things.

Jim went upstairs and into the bath.

“What was the fight about?” I asked, bringing fresh towels into the bathroom. Jim was washing his hair.

“Something stupid, as always.” He looked up at me. “Which kind of tractor is better - International Harvester or John Deere?”

“That’s what they were fighting about?”

“Yeah, and I’m also asking you the question.”

“Does it really matter, as long as it can pull a plow. I think when it comes down to it, it would have to be a matter of which one is my favorite color. And since neither of them are purple, I won’t crack anyone’s skull open about it.”

“You’re the best.”

I set the towels down on the toilet and nodded. “Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“Well, now Peter knows it, too. You should have heard him talking about you at the bar.”

I sat up on the bathroom counter. “Yeah? What did he say?”

Jim gave me a sideways glance, then submerged himself all but his knees.

“Fine, I can take a hint. Boy talk is boy talk.” Before I left the bathroom, I put my hand on his knee. He was looking up at me through the bathwater. “I’m glad you’re not hurt, zipper-man.”


	9. The All-Hours Clinic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy starts work and finds that Jim has an old friend living in this town.

I loved my job. Hell, I love it still. But that first week of work was the first time that I could remember when I felt like I had found my place. Oh, sure there were a few problems with the scheduling, and I didn’t have a bank account yet to set up direct deposit, and some of the administrative issues still had to be resolved. But the job itself was wonderful.

The Riverside Clinic was clean and modern. It was a General Practitioner’s office and urgent care clinic rolled up in one. There were two doctors, four nurses including myself, an anesthesiologist who came in on call and for the Thursday meetings, two receptionists, and four assistants.

Doctor Green was the head doctor in the clinic. He was an older man, with a jolly and kind face. He loved talking about his grandchildren and the Lion’s Club, and brought in donuts for my first day. “We’re trying to hire another doctor and two more nurses, but right now, we’re all stretched a little thin.”

He and Dr. Murphy - a woman only four years out of med school - each worked 6 days a week, splitting the shifts, and alternating who was on call for the 11pm to 8am hours when there was no doctor in the clinic.

“Well, I don’t have much experience with surgery, but I did spend a year as a first responder in Winnipeg. So, if you need me for the night shift, I’m okay with that.”

“Oh, you’re an angel. But right now, Jake’s got the night shift. He likes it well enough. We have you scheduled for the 7am to 4pm shift. Since you worked in pediatrics, we thought that might be best. Lots of kids with the flu, stomach bugs, and such.” He gave me a tour of the clinic, showing me the kitchenette, the lounge area with a cot in the back in case the night crew had a chance to get some sleep. And then all of the patient rooms.

“Thanks. I do pretty well with kids.” I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder.

“Well, it’s around noon is when the men start trickling in.” He motioned toward some lockers. “You can put that in there if you like.”

I stuffed my backpack in a locker and put the key in my pocket. “The men?”

“Yeah, they come in from the oil flats and refineries. You’ll get to know them pretty well. There are some tough old dogs with chronic conditions who can’t afford to take the time to go see a specialist in Edmonton, so we just do the best we can out here.”

“I know what that’s like, Dr. Green.”

He gave me a sympathetic look and smiled. “Yeah, I heard. One of your references wanted to make sure we knew about your condition.”

“And you still hired me? Thank you.”

He nodded. “Let’s talk about this in my office.”

We went into his office, and he tapped the button on the white noise generator before closing the door. “Never met a wall that didn’t have ears, Mrs. Howlett.”

It was strange hearing that name. “Oh, I know.”

“So, your M-gene. It isn’t dangerous, I assume.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s just a funny thing that I can do. And it’s been useful in the past in helping treat patients with eating disorders, but otherwise…” I took a deep breath and let it out. “What else can you do with the ability to change the taste of things?”

Dr. Green laughed. “Oh, is that all?”

“Well, and I can change the smell of body odor and perfumes. But yea, that’s all.” I didn’t need to tell him about being able to detect other mutants. “And you don’t hold this against me?”

“Can’t blame a leukemia patient for having cancer,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, I’ve known some of you who have been fine, upright citizens until someone decided to take them away and train them to be far more dangerous than they needed to be. I’m glad you won’t ever have to go through that.”

I relaxed and settled back in my chair. “Me too. Sometimes I wish my power wasn’t so useless, but then the alternative could be much worse.”

Dr. Green cleared his throat and nodded.“The other thing I got from those interviews with your former employers is that everyone was sad to see you go, even though they were the ones that fired you. You’re a good nurse, Mrs. Howlett, and as far as I’m concerned that’s the onlyimportant thing.”

I loved my job.

  
  
  


By the time Jim had come to pick me up, I had helped dozens of patients, including four families of kids with the flu who were all very excited to see a new nurse in town, a man with severe arthritis who told me all about how his pea crop was last year, several men with lung ailments all related to the refineries where they worked, and a woman who insisted on telling me every single social club in town, who I needed to meet to become a part of them, and where the quilting bee met on Sunday evenings. “Open to all, dear, even if you don’t know how to quilt.”

And then at 4:00, when he showed up, all attention shifted. Suddenly, I wasn’t the most interesting thing to happen to this town.

They didn’t even know the half of it.

I suppose we were kind of an unlikely couple. He was older than me, very fit, not traditionally handsome in the least, but certainly held himself with confidence. I was overweight, younger, awkward in my mannerisms, and looked nothing like any normal woman would aspire to be.

When I came out, he was sitting in one of the seats, reading a children’s book while everyone else in the clinic was trying not to look at him.

“Jim, come here and meet some of the staff.” I motioned him over, and Candice, the day receptionist stood up.

It felt strange introducing him as my husband. I hadn’t really had to do that before, and even as the words came out of my mouth, I had to suppress the urge to laugh at them.

I brought him into the back and showed him around a bit, then I took him to Dr. Green’s office. We waited for a few moments for his patient to leave, and then went inside.

“Doctor Green, this is my husband, Jim.”

Jim went right up to the man, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Matthew Green, of all people?”

The good doctor looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “Logan? You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’ve change a lot more than you know. I had no idea you were the man who hired Lucy. Now it all makes sense.” Jim turned back to me. “Lucy, this is Matt Green.” He told me as if I should know who he was.

“When I saw the name Howlett on the paperwork, I thought there couldn’t possibly be a chance. All of her references and her resume said Williams. But then she comes in here wearing a wedding ring and writing the name Howlett on her paperwork, and I thought to myself, “No, it couldn’t be.” But then here you are.”

“You two know each other.”

“We were in the army together.” Jim said at the same time Dr. Green said, “He saved my life.”

So, Jim had yet another friend in town. And I had the strangest kind of job security anyone could ask for.

I loved my job.

 

Friday morning, Jim tried to wake me up before the alarm went off. He was sitting on the edge of the bed by me, petting my hair back, and calling my name. I thought it was a dream.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and kissed his arm, then fell asleep again.

I did wake up, though, when he stood bolt upright, and practically dragged me out of bed with him.

“Come on, little lady, snap out of it. Whatever kind of dream you’re having, it’s nothing compared to what you’ve got when you open your eyes.”

I was groggy, barely awake, and I could have sworn I imagined it when he lifted up my chin and said “God help me, I want to, though.”

He went over to the window and opened the curtains, then took my hand and hauled me over there to look outside.

Sitting in our driveway, in a glorious brown and tan color straight out of the 70’s was this retro-hipster sedan. “What the heck is that?” I asked, squinting to force my eyes to focus.

“It’s our wedding present from Matt Green. Well, mine, anyway. He’s not allowed to give presents like this to his nurses.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s a 1979 Dodge Dart Swinger. It’s my old car.” He put his arm around my waist. “The note said I’m not allowed to let you get sick while riding in the cold on the back of my bike.”

“Smart man. Doesn’t want to be down a nurse during the cold and flu season.” I looked back to the bed. It really did seem so warm and soft.

“Don’t you dare think about it. I’m taking you out for breakfast.”

He kissed me on the ear then went over to the dresser and pulled out some clothes. “I need an early start at work today, anyway. Hunting season has started, and we’re already starting to get calls about where it’s safe for kids to go.”

We had breakfast at Smitty’s, then he dropped me off at work. When I went inside, the night nurse, Maria, called out to me. “Oh, thank God you’re early. Would you mind starting now? We just got in three cases of the flu, and Mr. Renyolds has shot himself again while cleaning out his hunting rifle.”

I shoved my backpack into my locker and hung my coat on the peg. “Where do you need me?” I asked as I started scrubbing my hands.

“The Killian boys are in room six. I’ve got George on a saline IV, and Tommy probably needs a new warm blanket.”

No questions. No caution. Just business as usual. The business of helping people.

I loved my job.


	10. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy and Jim team up to save a young man's life.

Jim was thoroughly enjoying his new job. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was his own way of doing what I’d been doing for so long. He could use his skills and his mutant ability just to enhance performance in a regular human job. It gave him an edge over the normal criminals, he had infinite stamina and wouldn’t be affected by the cold and the exhaustion of his work.

And he started sleeping again.

As long as I’d known him, he never had a regular sleeping schedule. He would sleep for a few hours here and there every couple of days, but because his body would repair any damage done to it, he only slept for a longer period if he had been injured more than his body could handle.

But these days, he would come into bed a couple hours after me, and get up about an hour before I woke up. And he would actually be sleeping.

This morning, though, we were both awakened before the alarm by a phone call.

“Hmmm?” Jim answered the phone. “Yeah, how long’s he been gone?”

He pushed the covers aside and sat up on the bed. “Alright, I’ll come in. Give me fifteen minutes.”

Jim hung up the phone and looked over at me. “Gotta go, Lucy. We’ve got a boy missing.”

“What? Who?” I asked in a groggy voice.

Jim stood and stretched, flexing his back muscles, then leaned over and grabbed his uniform shirt off of the chair. “Dennis something. Graduated high school last year. He came back for the end of the season.”

“Dennis Langley? I know him, he’s one of my patients. Asthmatic.” I sat up.

“Yeah, well he and his buddies went hunting last night, and two of the three boys managed to find their way back, but he’s still out there somewhere.”

I shoved the covers aside and went over to the dresser. “I’ll come with you. He’s going to need some medical attention.”

“We can bring the medic from the station, Lucy.”

“Or you can bring me who knows what’s going on with that kid. Besides, I’ve got a good idea where he might be, if he went out into the woods with his friends. He’s come into the clinic several times near shock from his “ragweed” allergies, even outside of ragweed season. So, I’m 99% sure they weren’t hunting.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Dennis is dangerously allergic to cannabis.”

  
  


I’m one of those people who absolutely hates being wrong. I just hate it. But there are times, like today, when I hate being right, even more. There were only four places in the area where the kids could have set up a greenhouse without anyone knowing. And it took Jim only a few minutes to get the location from Dennis’s friends.

The other officers didn’t ask how he got the information, and I just sat there in the office, clutching my first responder bag, keeping my mouth shut.

We drove out to the end of RR 220, then into the forest reserve and down near the caves. The area had been off-limits due to some sinkholes caused by fracking a few years ago. But that, according to the boys, just made it the perfect location for them to set up their little business venture. They hadn’t considered that if the land had sunk once, it could easily sink again.

They had left a trail of beer bottles along the path they took to the greenhouse. That made it easy enough to find where the greenhouse had been. But instead, we just found a giant, gaping hole in the ground with some evergreen tops pointing out of it.

“This is bad,” Jim muttered as he approached the edge. “No, don’t come near here. I don’t know if it’s safe.”

I stayed back for just a moment, then joined him near the edge of the hole. “Can you see the greenhouse?” I looked down, and we really couldn’t see much through the trees.

“Nope, but it reeks of weed down there, so I think it’s safe to say we’ve at least found the location.”

I slung my bag across my back and held my arms out to Jim. “Okay, so you’re mister athletic. Jump me down there.”

He just stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “Get on my back. That way I’ll take the brunt of the damage.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he hoisted me up on his back. “Sorry about the weight,” I muttered.

“What weight?” He took one step back. “Okay, it’s go time.”

We jumped down through the trees, me with my face buried in the back of his neck, and him, heading face down, as if he wanted to land on his stomach.  Just before we hit the bottom, though, he kicked down and righted himself, landing on his feet.

The bottom of the hole was at least 40 feet down. It took me a moment to catch my breath, but then when I looked over at the broken mass of plastic and wood, I saw Dennis’s feet. That’s when my own instincts kicked in.

“We have to get him out of here first. Do you think you can jump or climb up there with him, then come back and get me?” I pulled him out of the wreckage and checked his neck, his arms, and his pulse. He was still alive.

“I can do better than that. If you can carry him, I can take both of you.”

I won’t go into details about how Jim got us out of that hole, mainly because I don’t know much about it, myself. But after wrapping Dennis and I up in one of the plastic tarps and tying us to his back, he basically clawed his way up one of the trees, then jumped us over to safety.

Dennis had the faintest pulse I’d ever felt outside of the hospice ward. His body was cold, and I could tell he had already been through the worst stages of shock.

“Give me your jacket,” I called out to Jim. I worked quickly, pulling four epi-pens out of my bag, as well as a heat blanket, two hot packs, a saline IV, and a syringe of adrenaline. I took off my own coat and stuffed it under his head, took off my socks and shoes, then went to work. First, I administered the adrenaline, then all four epi pens, and a shot of cortisone. I cracked open the hot packs, mixed them up, and put one in each of my socks, then stuffed them in his armpits. After wrapping him in the thermal blanket, I put Jim’s coat around his head, and started up the IV.

“Call the paramedics,” I told him, tossing him my phone. Jim started dialing. “When you get them on the phone, give it to me so I can talk to them.”

I checked Dennis’s pulse again. It was a little stronger; the adrenaline was kicking in.

Jim handed me the phone, and I told the paramedic everything I had done. I also gave them full instructions on how to find us using the beer bottles. They said they would have a helicopter ready to take him down to Edmonton.

We kept the phone call open so they could use GPS to find us if they needed to.

I sat back on my bare heels and looked up at Jim. I couldn’t really read the look on his face. “I think he’s going to be alright.”

Jim didn’t have anything to say. He came over to me, lifted me off the ground, and brought me into his arms in the most protective hug I’d ever felt. “That was possibly the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered in my ear.

“I was just doing my job, I whispered into his shoulder.” Suddenly the gravity of the whole situation dawned on me. If I hadn’t heard the phone call this morning. If I hadn’t insisted I go with him. If I hadn’t known about Dennis’s allergies.

If I hadn’t come to Peace River…

We heard the paramedics coming through the woods and I snapped out of my introspection. “Over here!” Jim called out. He pulled away from me, but kept one hand on the small of my back. They came in and moved Dennis onto a stretcher. I gave them my used epi pens, the adrenaline syringe, and the cortisone package.

“Great job, there. Who is his doctor so we can send him his charts?” One of the paramedics asked, taking out his note pad.

“Doctor Green at the Riverside Clinic, Peace River. And my name’s Lucy Howlett. If you could send me an update about which hospital he’ll be at, I would appreciate that. I need to tell his parents.”

The man pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “He’ll be in the ER there for a while from the look of him. He was lucky you found him here and not down at the bottom of that hole.”

After they took him away, Jim pulled me close again. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just… I need to get some socks.”

He smiled and put his hand on the side of my face, then went up on his toes and kissed me on the forehead. “Want to stop by the house on the way into work?”

I nodded.

Slipping my muddy feet into my shoes, I picked up my coat and put it on. Then I gave Jim his coat, picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. He took my hand in his and stuffed into his pocket again, and we walked like that back to the car.

  
  


When we got home, there was a message on the answering machine. It was Dr. Green telling me I didn’t have to go into work if I didn’t feel like it. The next one was for Jim, basically saying the same thing.

I went over to the kitchen, made some tea, and brought it to the dining room table where Jim was sitting, elbows on the table, his head in his hands.

“Here.” I sat next in the chair to the right of him.

“I’ve never seen that before. I mean, of course I have, but not right up close and personal with people I know. You went in there and brought that boy back from the brink of death with just your know-how and a bag of medicine.” He looked up at me. “That’s incredible.”

“It’s what we do.  I told you, I used to be a first-responder. You know that.”

“Knowing is one thing, seeing it happen is another. I’m so used to watching people die, I’m just not used to watching people… do the opposite.”

“Bring ‘em back to life?”

“Yeah.”

I reached over and put my hand on his. We never talked about his past. I would never ask him to relive anything that he’d done, and I’m sure he was ready to put that all behind him from the time he volunteered to come up here with me. There were horrors back there. Some of which I couldn’t possibly imagine.

I had hoped that today would be the start of a kind of moral healing for him.

“You saved that boy’s life as much as I did. You got the call, you found him, you jumped down there, and you brought him up.”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

“And you’ve saved countless people before, but it’s always different when there’s a face, and a cold body, and it goes from still and barely there to breathing and warming up.”

He nodded, then picked up the tea and held it close to his face. “Tea or coffee flavored?”

“Tea. You told me not to use my powers on you again until you figured out how they work and how I can control them.”

“Just as well. I’m starting to get used to this stuff.”

  
  


We did end up going into work. He dropped me off at the clinic, and kissed me on the cheek before driving away. When I went inside, Maria was still there, bringing in a young boy in a cast. “Lucy! Oh my God, I thought you weren’t coming in today.”

“I’m here. I’m fine.”

“And Dennis?”

“I haven’t heard yet. He was critical, but stabilizing when they took him away. He’s probably at Edmonton General by now.”

I passed by Dr. Green on my way to the lockers. “Lucy, can I see you in my office for a minute?”

“Yeah, let me put my things away.”

I stuffed my backpack into my locker and followed him into his office. He touched the white noise machine and closed the door behind me again.

“So, it was you and Logan out there this morning? I got a brief report from the paramedic who brought Dennis to the hospital. He said that you two were out there, and you were spot on with your treatment.”

“It’s what I used to do, back in Winnipeg.”

“And Logan was out there doing what he does best, I suppose? They said he was found next to the sink hole.”

“Well… that’s what they saw when they got there. Things were a little different when we arrived.”

He sat in his chair and folded his hands in front of him on the desk. “That’s what I thought.” He paused for a moment, then took a deep breath. “You’re here as a registered nurse. And you do it very well. But there will be times, like today, you may want to help Logan with what he’s doing.”

“Oh, I promise it won’t happen like that. Today was a strange case, and I’m really sorry for coming in late. I just couldn’t leave Dennis out there if he--”

Dr. Green put up his hand. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not reprimanding you for going out there and saving that young man’s life. I’m telling you that if you need to go, you have my permission to go.”

He wasn’t going to fire me. He wasn’t even going to write me up for being late. Instead, he had called me in to give me permission to go with Jim whenever he needed me.

After living in California, this small town with its morals and standards and ethical treatment of mutants had me turned upside down. I felt like Alice, and this was my Wonderland.


	11. Snow on the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim's Holiday party is cut short by a snowstorm, and Lucy is called away for an emergency at work.

Things that Jim loves: Canadian folk music, liver in just about any form, coffee, desserts, looking up at the sky above the trees behind our house, his motorcycle, smoking cigars.

I don’t have a problem with his smoking. Yeah, I’m in health care, and I’m personally against smoking, but he doesn’t smoke around me, he doesn’t smoke around kids, and with his healing factor, it will never hurt him.

Besides, there’s that lingering scent of his cigars that I’ve always loved. Probably because it reminds me of his smell when I first met him.

Things that Jim hates: Child abusers.

Sure, he hates murderers and villains and orange marmalade and racists, too. But Jim could never forgive anyone who abuses any child. Be that physical, sexual, or mental abuse, they really are the lowest of the low in his book. And I’ve seen that dangerous fire light up in his eyes so many times when watching the news.

A fire that burns so harsh, I have to look down at his knuckles to make sure those claws don’t come out in his rage.

Oh, and he hates anyone who makes me feel bad. Yeah, he really hates that a lot, too.

  
  


I finally had a chance to meet some of Jim’s co-workers at a pre-holiday party in early October. They always celebrated a couple months ahead since the holidays were usually far too busy for more than a couple people to get away at a time. And once the snow fell, Jim and his partner would become much busier than usual.

His partner was named Travis. He was from the Blackfoot nation, and had worked as a tracker for the RCMP for several years. Those two men were really two peas in a pod, so to speak. Travis was also shorter than the rest of his co-workers, although not nearly as short as Jim. He wore his black hair pulled back into a single ponytail at the back of his neck, and had the same kind of amused scowl that Jim so often wore. The two could have been brothers in another lifetime.

Carter was an over-enthusiastic man just out of his training. He was their communication specialist, and manned the phones most days, although he looked as if he could have been on the brute squad, instead.

Jackson was the boss. Johnson, Pearson, Levi, and Morris were all regular police, and the only female in the office, Melissa Law, was in charge of the armory.

I didn’t get much of a chance to meet the others before Jim’s phone rang. And then a few seconds later, my own phone rang. Then Travis’s went off, Carter’s, and everyone else’s in succession.

“Wind direction’s changed,” Jackson announced. “NOAA gives us about another hour before it starts coming down hard.”

I looked down at my phone message. It was from Jake.

Come in quick. It’s Mr. Langley.

I shoved my phone into Jim’s hand. “I have to go. Can you drop me off at the clinic?”

Travis looked over Jim’s shoulder. “Langley Senior? What’s going on with him.”

“Patient confidentiality. I can’t tell you.” I gave him an apologetic shrug. “But I do need to go.”

Jim nodded. He handed my phone back to me. “Right, well, things are going to break up here pretty soon, anyway. If the snow’s coming this way, everyone will want to get to their stations before it starts getting bad.”

Travis pursed his lips. “Do you mind if I go with you two? I can make sure the clinic’s snow blowers have gas and are prepared for this night.”

There was something else behind his words. I shot a glance at Jim. He rolled his eyes and shrugged. With a sigh, he gave a shrug and ushered me over toward the door. “We think he might have been the one who set the boys up with their little “business.” Dennis never really seemed the type to venture out like this. He was kind of a stupid kid in a lot of respects, but stupid enough to start a drug business when you’re allergic to the merchandise?”

I put on my coat and hat just as another text message came through. “Oh, God,” I breathed. “Please, no…” I bolted for the car, slipping and falling on a patch of the newly fallen snow.

As I scrambled to get up, Jim lifted me and held my elbow. “What?”

“Attempted Suicide. Drug overdose.”

Travis drove us to the clinic, and we arrived just as the snowfall became heavier. His truck was large, had snow tires, a front plow, and was far more suited to this weather than our old Dodge.

I ran inside, tossing my coat and purse on the kitchenette table as I pulled a spare scrubs shirt over my party dress and began scrubbing up.

Jake came into the prep room, nodding at Jim and Travis on his way. He was a young Pakistani man who wore thick glasses, but was one of the best nursing techs I’d ever known. He had a textbook knowledge of medicines, but almost no bedside manner to speak of. Jake loved working nights, so he could work in his degree program during the day.

“What happened?” I asked as I pulled on a pair of gloves.

“Overdose. He stole Mr. Anderson’s painkillers, and it looks like he took an entire bottle of aspirin, as well. Probably with whiskey by the smell of him.”

I followed Jake into the treatment room. “And what’s been done so far?”

“Well, he’s emptied his stomach a couple of times, and we’ve gone through two saline IVs so far. I’m really pushing the fluids through him right now. He’s severely dehydrated.”

“Why not call Dr. Green, or Dr. Murphy?”

“I did. They can’t get in ‘cause of the snow.They’re further out west. I knew you’d be at the party with your husband, so I thought you’d be closer.” He motioned out to where Jim and Travis were chatting near the kitchenette. “It’s just me here, and I can’t see any other patients and watch over him at the same time.”

“Did Joanna bring him in?” Joanna was his wife. She had spent the week in Hospital with Dennis, then personally drove him back home for the rest of his recovery. I was lucky enough to meet her every time she brought Dennis in for a check up, and I thought her devotion to her family was unending.

“She left him just after she brought Dennis back from Edmonton. He’s been living in that trailer park on the west end of town since September. His neighbor noticed that Langley had left his car lights on, and went in to let him know.”

The bell rang at the front desk, and Jake gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Lucy. I’ve gotta go. With the snow, we’re probably going to be pretty busy tonight before things get too bad.”

“Go. It’s fine,” I told him, waving him off.

I checked the patient’s vitals, then replaced the IV bag, got another blanket out of the warmer and wrapped him up in it. A few moments later, Jim and Travis came to the room.

“It’s okay, you can come on in.” I told them.

“He doesn’t look so good,” Jim said.

“No, he doesn’t.” I stretched my back and arms, then went over to sit in the chair by the bed. “And he’s got to go through this alone. It’s just really sad.”

Travis nodded, then looked back and forth between the two of us. “I’m going to get some coffee. You two want any?”

“There are cups above the coffee maker in the--”

“Yeah, I know. So, three coffees?” We nodded. “I’ll make a fresh pot.”

Jim came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m okay,” I told him. I lied. I was never okay with attempted suicides. “It’s just that this is a horrible thing to go through alone. Yeah, he did it to himself, and his circumstances are all his own fault, but it still just sucks.”

Jim went over to the chair on the other side of the bed and sat down. “There was a time in my life when I would have pulled the plug on a man like this. That other version of my would have labeled him a sack of shit, unworthy of the son whose life he nearly destroyed, and a cancer to the human race. But then again, back then I was always really quick to judge.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Now, I’m different.” He just stared at Mr. Langley’s face. It was wrinkled and looked older with his dehydration, he was balding, and had dyed his hair to cover the gray, but the roots were all showing a bright silvery white.

“So, do you guys know that he started the drug business?”

“We have enough evidence to take him to court. But it will mean nothing if Dennis doesn’t testify, or if he takes his father’s side.”

I nodded. And with his father attempting suicide, he might not testify against him. “It’s so complicated.”

“Child abuse always is.”

Travis came in with the coffee, and a half hour later, I received word that Dr. Murphy had arrived.

“How is he?” she asked as she came into the room.

“As well as can be expected under the circumstances.” I got up and stretched again.

Dr. Murphy scanned her card in the computer system and brought up his chart. She read through all of our notes, then nodded at me. “Go home. You look beat.”

“Thanks. I think I need about 12 hours sleep.”

She laughed. “And don’t come in tomorrow. We can cover your shift. You’ll need your rest for the upcoming weeks.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

She looked between Jim and Travis and myself. “Oh, you didn’t hear? They’re saying we’ll get at least three feet of snow.”

  
  


Travis drove us home, plowing his way through the falling snow out on RR 213. He cleared our driveway while I made some tea and Jim lit a fire. When he came in, he stomped the snow off of his boots and shook it out of his hair. “You’ve got a really nice home here,”  he told Jim.

“Thanks. Why don’t you stay for a beer? Lucy’s makin’ tea. She doesn’t drink alcohol at night. Gives her acid reflux.”

Travis chuckled. “Nah, I’m alright. I should get back to the office, anyway. You work tomorrow?”

I got a beer out of the fridge for Jim and poured myself some tea, then brought them into the living room.

“Nope. Got tomorrow and Sunday off for once.” He took the beer, smiled at me, then downed half the bottle in one go.

“Well, then I’ll come by tomorrow,” Travis told him. “We can clear your driveway again, and I’ll take you to get your car.”

Jim could easily go and get the car on his own, to be honest. In fact, I suspected that had been his plan all along. But he wasn’t eager to let his work buddies know the extent of his “skill set” just yet. Not until it was deemed necessary in the line of duty.

“Sounds great. You’ll have to stay for lunch. We’ve got some leftover turkey, and although I’m useless in the kitchen, Lucy’s a fantastic cook.”

“I’m making soup. It’s really nothing special.”

Jim leaned over and rubbed his nose on my cheek. “Everything’s special when you make it, my little lady.”

The only times Jim put on this kind of a show was when he wasn’t sure about the intentions of people around us. I was a little confused at first - Travis seemed like a nice enough guy, and it was his partner. But then again, Jim had better instincts about people than I ever did.

Still, why invite someone over for lunch if you suspect they might have some designs on your…?

I think it was at that time that the truth dawned on me. Oh, I didn’t do anything about it, and I probably didn’t even believe it at the time, but still I knew.

And it warmed me to the core.


	12. Bacon and Eggs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy wakes to the smell of bacon and eggs, and is introduced to a friend and an enemy from Jim's past.

There is nothing in the world like the smell of bacon and eggs cooking first thing in the morning. And it’s even more amazing when you’re not the one cooking them.

It was Sunday morning. Neither Jim nor I had to be at work that day, and on the previous day nearly two feet of snow had fallen in 24 hours. After Travis plowed our driveway, we had lunch, and then he took Jim to get the Dodge from the office.

The day was completely uneventful, and I had decided to make an early night of it.

Jim stayed up to shovel around the garage and front steps.

Which was why I was a little surprised to wake up to the smell of breakfast already cooking in the kitchen. I was even more surprised to roll over and find that Jim was still sleeping next to me in the bed.

“Jim, there’s someone downstairs making breakfast.”

He breathed in deeply and then sighed the breath out again. “Smells good.”

“No, I mean, there’s someone… oh, forget it.”

If it was anyone we didn’t know, Jim would have already been up, scouting them out. And if they posed any sort of danger at all, would have thrown them out on their ear.

Shrugging into my oversized sweater that I wore as a housecoat, I tried to make some sense of my greasy, messy bed hair, and went downstairs. I expected Travis had come back, they had a few too many beers, and he had spent the night on our sofa.

I had not expected what I saw.

Standing in my kitchen was a priest.

“Aah, good morning, little lady!” he greeted me.

A blue priest. With only three fingers on each hand.

“You probably don’t remember me, do you?” He continued to scramble some eggs, put them on a plate, then went to the oven and brought out a tray of biscuits.

“Sure I do. You’re the man on the roof. But you had a tail.”

He let his tail fall down from under his robe. “I still do. And you have a fantastic memory.”

I went to the coffee maker and flipped the switch. “Yeah, well, seeing a blue guy perched on top of the roof with a tail wrapped around his ankles leaves quite an impression on a 13-year-old girl. Coffee should be ready in a few minutes.”

“Aah, thank you. So, is Logan still asleep.”

“Who, Jim? Yeah. He’s up there. Want me to get him?

The man in the kitchen shook his head. “No, I talked to him last night. I wanted to talk to you this morning.” He scooped some eggs onto three plates, then put three strips of bacon each on two, and loaded the other up with the rest. He did the same with the biscuits - one each on two of them, and then four more on the other. “That one’s for Logan.” He gave me a wink, then carried our plates into the dining room.

I took two mugs down from the rack and brought the pot of coffee with me.

“I’m Kurt, by the way.”

“I know. Nightcrawler they call you. But you’re nothing like a nightcrawler.”

“And you’re Lucy, and you’re everything like a Lucy.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I was pretty sure nothing he said to me was meant to be mean in any way.

“So, what brings you out here? Are you just visiting an old friend?” I sat at my usual place at the table - facing the kitchen - and poured out two mugs of coffee.

“Yes, that’s part of it. Also, I came to see how things are going out here. You two are still friends?” He asked as if he’d expected me to say no.

“Of course. What’s going on?” I opened up my biscuit and stuffed some eggs and bacon inside. “We’re not living in sin, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Oh, if I were worried about his mortal soul, I would be concerned about far more than his sexual pursuits with a girl a third his age.” Kurt gave me a funny look as I poured hot sauce in my biscuit sandwich. “No, there’s something out here, and I came to tell him about it. But I also wanted to meet you.”

“Something dangerous?”

“Everything is dangerous. Even that sandwich you’re eating now can be dangerous.” Kurt bit off the end of a piece of bacon, then took a sip of coffee. “But yes, there’s something dangerous coming. And fair warning and preparation is all we can hope for at this point.”

I nodded. “I know all about that as a nurse. Before the full moon, when there’s political tension, before and just after some really bad storms… we all have these things we prepare for.”

We ate our breakfast in silence for a few minutes, then Jim came down the stairs.

“Mornin’ Kurt.”

Kurt waved. “Your plate’s in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, bub.” Jim brought his plate and his favorite mug over to the table and sat down with us. “So, you two met each other, then?”

“Yes, she’s quite the lovely woman. I can see why you would want to…”

Kurt stopped short as Jim slammed down his fork.

“Well, anyway, it’s nice to have you come and visit.” I told him, rolling my eyes. I wasn’t sure what kind of conversation or non-conversation the two men were having, but Kurt looked amused, Jim looked grumpy, and I felt like I was completely out of the conversation, even though it was about me. “We got more snow? Lovely. I think I’ll just finish this and go outside to shovel. It can’t be less than fifteen degrees out there, right?”

I took another bite of my breakfast sandwich, downed my coffee and shoved my plate aside. “I’m going to shower. Anyone else need hot water this morning?”

Jim looked up at me. “Sit. We should all talk.”

I sat and picked at the bits of egg left on my plate. “Okay. So, what’s going on. There’s danger lurking on the horizon, nobody’s been ready to fill me on any details of anything, and it’s not even Halloween yet.”

Kurt and Jim looked at each other. “She’s all yours, my friend. You tell her.”

“It’s Victor Creed?” I asked.

“Worse. My son has come back to find me. Probably to kill me.”

I hadn’t heard much about him. It’s not like the news is filled with the names and whereabouts of various mutant criminals. And actually, I had thought he was dead for as little as people had been talking about him.

He represented more than just a threat to Jim and the entire area, but he was a link to a past life Jim had been trying to forget. So, if he came into town looking to kill his father, there was no telling just what this renegade child might do.

The fact that Jim was a widower never bothered me. That fact that he had children out there with whom he had no contact at all didn’t bother me, either. We all have unique circumstances that bring us to where we are, and most of the time, they’re all out of our control.

What did bother me was that just as he was settling into a life he seemed to really enjoy, that past he’d left behind was rearing its ugly head again.

“We have a few fronts of defense,” Kurt told us. “And we have someone deep undercover who can warn us when he starts to get closer.”

“But he is definitely coming?” I asked, running my thumb around the rim of my coffee mug.

“He was talking about going “home for the holidays.” And since his mother is dead, I can assume that means me. Daken Akihiro is bad news. He’s one of only a few who have the ability to bring a beast out of me that I’ve been trying to suppress my whole life.”

“Okay, so this big bad nasty is coming to town, and is more than a match for our own big bad natsties who will be preparing to fight him.” I nodded, then tapped my fingers on the table. “I can only assume you’re telling me because you think he’ll come after me first.”

“We think it’s likely,” Kurt admitted. He picked the last piece of bacon off his plate with his tail and put it on Jim’s empty plate. “So, then the question is, do you want to stay here and potentially be in mortal danger, or do you want to go someplace else that might be safe.”

“Possibility of danger, possibility of safety? I think I’d rather stay here.”

Jim looked up at me, but didn’t say a word.

“He’s a really bad character, little lady,” Kurt told me. “He has claws like Logan’s, and no scruples at all.”

“And if I bleed on him, I will haunt him forever with a state of euphoria and goodness that will seep down into his soul and destroy every bit of hatred he has left.” I shrugged, then looked back at Jim and smiled. “You can explain to him my other power while I go upstairs and shower. On my way around the table, I kissed Jim on top of his head and patted his shoulder. “Whatever fate has in store for us, I’m ready for it.”

  
  


When I came back downstairs, Jim wasn’t there. Kurt was sitting in the living room, paging through a farmer’s almanac, drinking what must have been the last of the coffee.

“He went out to sniff around a bit,” he said without looking up.

I continued to dry my hair with my towel, went into the living room, and flopped down on the sofa. “Sniffing around in a literal or a figurative sense?”

He looked up at me and smiled. “A little bit of both, I suspect.”

“I’m really not afraid of him.”

“Who? Logan, or Daken?”

“Why would I be afraid of Jim? He’s never given me any reason to be scared. No, I’m not afraid of Daken.” I folded the towel and set it on the arm of the sofa near the fireplace. “Did he tell you about me?”

“About how you can make people feel things? Yes. Although I’m not quite sure how it works, myself.” He put down the book and crossed his legs. “It’s certainly not through any kind of manipulation from what he was explaining.”

“Well, the way I understand it, I can make people taste what they want. I can make things smell the way they want, and something inside of me can make them feel a really intense…”

“Pleasure?”

“No, well, yes, but not just that. My mom said she experienced it, too. And a few people from my old job. Back when I didn’t know the full extent of my abilities. It’s more like bringing a kind of understanding about what to them and also fulfilling their desires. It only works once, though. Maybe a couple of times. But for the most part, once you’ve figured out your desires and felt that kind of extreme comfort, there’s no point in trying again.”

“Do you think this is what brought about this sense of peace in Lo- in Jim?”

“I don’t think so.” I shrugged. “He was ready to start a new life from the time I pulled him out of that trash heap the first time. Otherwise, he would have disappeared in the night and never would have come back.”

It was always hard explaining my view of the world to other people. Everyone lives their lives in their own way, basing all of their ideas and judgments on the things they’ve experienced so far. But being a nurse, I’d been in touch with so many different kinds of horrors, and helped people through so many milestones that would seem tiny to most, but to those involved are monumental.

“You’re thinking about it.” Kurt told me.

I had gone off into my own world. “I was thinking about what one of my cancer patients told me. He said that there’s nothing in this world scarier than cancer. And if he beat it, that would make him the bravest and strongest man in the world.”

Kurt smiled. “Did he beat it?”

“No. But he fought harder than anyone I’ve ever known - even Jim. So, if a frail young man can fight like that without any powers, and no advantage at all, then I can face Daken if the time comes.”

“You’ve thought of a plan?”

“I’ve thought of a contingency. That’s a little different.”

“And your contingency is?”

“Well, if he tries to capture me, which I think is more likely, then I’ll spit on him. If he kills me, then he’ll get my blood on him.”

“That’s not much of a survival plan.”

“No, but it’s a neutralization contingency. Think of it this way. A touch of my saliva can make Jim curl up in a ball on the far end of the truck seat from the immense pleasure of the sensation. My blood? Well, who knows…”

“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” Kurt sighed. “Hebrews: 9:22.”

“And in this case, there might be redemption in that blood spilled.”

He shook his head. “You’re a rather astonishing young lady. Not many people would be willing to lay themselves on the line like that.”

I shrugged. “Jim didn’t tell you. I used to be a first responder. There are a lot more of us out there than you think.”


	13. Hunters on the Ridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim and Lucy go to track down a missing hunter.

Just a short drive west from Peace River, on the other side of Cardinal Lake is a mountain ridge that a lot of the locals like to visit. In the summer, it’s a fun place for families to go on picnics, hikes, camping, and searching for dinosaur bones. But in the fall and winter, it’s a favorite hunting spot for licensed hunters and poachers alike.

I was in the car with Jim when he got the call. We were on our way down to High Prairie to actually go and see a movie in a theater. Jim called it our “date night” and insisted that all married couples do this sort of thing, so it would look good if we did it, too. He’d been thinking of a lot of these “married couples” activities for us lately. And each time he suggested a new one, my heart swelled with pride.

I told myself it was because he was going to such lengths to keep me safe.

“Jim, are you available to take a drive up to white ridge? Travis is down in Edmonton picking up the new SUV from the depot, and we need someone with real tracking skills.” Johnson probably didn’t even try to see if Travis was back. From the sound of things, he wanted someone who could get out there and smell the blood.

“I’ve got it. It’ll be an hour if I really put my foot down, though.”

“Great. Break any speed laws necessary. I’ll put word out that you’re on your way. What we have is a missing black male, works at the Shell refinery. He’s been missing for ten hours so far. It’ll be twelve by the time you get up there.”

“So, how do you know he’s missing on the ridge? Maybe he just ran off with some girl?”

“Three of his hunting buddies came back without him. They said they heard a gunshot, and then a scream. When they got near the location where the man had been, all they found was his gun and some blood on the snow.” Johnson rustled some papers. “Names Josiah Beecher. From Calgary.”

It didn’t sound good. “My kit’s in the trunk,” I whispered to Jim.

“Send a photo of him to my phone. I’ll let you know when I get up there.” Jim ended the call and threw his phone in the cup holder.

“When we get there,” I corrected

Jim nodded. “Alright, when we get there. But you do as I say and stay away if I tell you to.”

“Absolutely. I want to help. I don’t have a death wish.”

“Smart girl.” Jim really did break all speed limits on his way up to the ridge. “If you hear my claws come out, you find the nearest rock and hide behind it, alright?”

“Um, sure.”

“If I’m right, and I sincerely hope I’m wrong, I’ve fought that thing before. And it’s a seriously nasty piece of work.”

  
  
  


When we arrived at the ridge, there four other Mounties waiting for Jim to lead the search party. I went around to the back of the car and got my kit out of the trunk. He stood a good foot shorter than the man he was talking to, and yet his authority was absolute. Anyone could see that he was completely in charge, and knew exactly what he was doing.

“I want you two about ten meters back on my right side, and I want one of you to stay down here with the vehicles, and the other to stay a good fifty meters to my left. Lucy, you’ll stay with me until we get to the point where the other hunters stopped, and then you just stay put and wait for my signal.”

I adjusted the kit across my back. “And what will that signal be?”

“You’ll know when and if it happens.”

“You didn’t bring your weapon,” one of the men observed.

Jim flashed him a challenging look. “I always bring my weapons. You just can’t see ‘em right now. Besides, I’m here as a tracker. You four are the marksmen. Just make sure you don’t shoot me up there. Or an even bigger mistake would be to accidentally shoot her.”

Now Jim really is the best there is at what he does. Especially when he’s hunting. I will never doubt his hunting and tracking skills and if there’s anything I’m ever missing, I’m sure just to ask him for help.

But that day, there was a harsh wind coming right from the top of the ridge. We were slow moving, and there wasn’t much of a scent to follow what with the cold air blowing right in our faces. Still, he managed to get us to the clearing where the hunters said they parted ways, and he found the scent of blood coming from one direction. “Stay here, Lucy. That rock there? That’s where I want you, and that’s where I’m coming to look for you if anything happens.”

I nodded and went over to the boulder he pointed out. It would not only shield my back from any animals that might attack, but it shielded me from the wind. “Just let me know if you need my help, though.”

“Oh, I’ll need it. One way or another. Someone’s gonna get hurt.”

Now, I’m not really sure how to even write about what happened after that. The details are something of a blur, and I’m not quite sure the order of events.

Jim and the men went further up the ridge. They had been gone less than five minutes before I heard Jim shout for one of the men to run down to the vehicles and call for help. I saw the man run down the path we’d blazed, and then there was the sound of a gunshot, and that unmistakable sound of Jim’s weapons coming out.

One of the men screamed, and as he did, I came out from behind the rock just enough to look up the hill.

Just then, the sharpest, most excruciating pain that I’d ever felt in my life dug deep into my shoulder. I screamed out as a flash of white fur came across my face. Reaching in my bag, I grabbed a syringe. It would either be an anesthetic, or a codeine shot, or adrenaline, but at that point, I didn’t care. Flipping the top, I jabbed it into the fur that had wrapped itself around my neck, and was rewarded when it pulled away. The creature  - that’s what it was I couldn’t really call it a wolf or a bear or a fox. It was a man-like, wolf-like, bear-like creature, reeled back, its mouth dripping with my own blood.

It stood easily seven feet tall, and had long, black claws that hung out of its giant white paws. The creature was covered in blood - some of it well dried on its belly. I assumed that was from the hunter we were looking for.

It lunged at me once more, but I managed to roll out of the way. Then it stood up and lifted its arm in the air, the claws fully extended and aimed directly at me. I tried to roll away again, but with my left arm dangling useless at my side, I only managed to flop over.

Just as I fell over on my side, I saw three blades come out from its neck, and then its head was separated from its body. Blood spewed everywhere, splashing all over my lower half, the snow around us, the rock, and the trees.

My eyes were blurry, and I was in so much pain, I couldn’t actually feel anything.

Jim shouted for the men to get the hell away from me, go down, and call in to the clinic. Then I felt him scramble to my side. He checked my pulse on my neck, and looked over the wound in my shoulder.

“There were two. I didn’t know there would be two of ‘em. There’s usually only one,” He muttered to me as he pulled me into his lap. He reached into my bag and brought out some bandages and antiseptic wash. “God, I’ll never forgive myself if…”

“It hurts,” I whined.

“Yeah. It does.”

“I can’t move my arm.”

“No, you can’t, and you won’t for a while. But you’re alive.”

“I don’t feel alive.” I was getting cold, my teeth began chattering, and I could tell it was the onset of shock. “Heat packs, thermal blanket, codeine shot right now. Codeine in my shoulder, right in the wound. Heat packs under my arms and on my chest.”

I’m not entirely sure how I stayed awake during the whole ordeal, but somehow I was able to talk Jim through the whole process.

He wrapped me up in the thermal blanket, then took off his own jacket and laid that over my legs.

“What was it?” I asked.

“Wendigo. There were two of them. They’re… oh, I’ll explain later. We found the man we were looking for - well, pieces of him, anyway.”

“You got both of ‘em?” The codeine was starting to take effect, and I could feel myself nodding off.

“Yeah.”

“Is that the dangerous thing you thought it might be?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we got ‘em.” I smiled. “I think I’m going to sleep. You gotta watch me and make sure I’m okay while I’m sleeping, alright?”

“I won’t leave your side, even if they take you into the operating room.”

Just as I nodded off, I could feel his warm breath on my cheek.

  
  
  


I woke up later that night in the clinic. Jim was out in the hallway talking to Dr. Green, and Jake was by my side, looking at me rather strangely. I still couldn’t speak yet, and I couldn’t feel or move my left arm at all. I was able to move my right fingers, though, and I could wiggle my toes. No nerve damage in any of those places. Then I tried focusing on something far away - the check-in station, and something close - the IV bag. No brain hemorrhages.

I was still on codeine, with a saline solution, plasma, and it looked like a bag of whole blood, as well. I wondered if Jim gave blood, if the recipient of it would gain any of his healing power. And if not, where did that healing power come from?

Just as I was musing these things, and looking at him in the hallway, he noticed me. Even though Dr. Green was still talking to him, he walked away and came right into my room. He didn’t sit in the chair, but lowered the hospital bed down as far as it would go, and sat right on the edge of the bed by me, taking my right hand into his lap, and leaning down to kiss me on the forehead.

“You still have blood on you,” I said softly.

“Didn’t go home yet. I told you I wouldn’t leave you, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. I feel like crap.”

“You don’t look so great right now, either.”

“Will my arm work okay?”

“Doc says you’ll have to take it easy for a while, and then you’re looking at a month of physical therapy, but you should be able to come back to work after the New Year.” Jim brought my hand up to his face so I could scratch his sideburns.

“I don’t want to wait that long. When can I go home?”

Jim smiled. “You have to be a good girl and finish all your yummy blood, plasma, and two more bags of salt water there before they’ll let you leave.”

“Boo.” I pouted. I started picking dried blood out of his hair, and off of his ear. “What about you? Do you get to stay with me?”

“I’m on administrative leave until they sort out what happened up there. And even if I wasn’t they said to stay with you until you’re safe at home.”

Jake came up and adjusted the levels of my painkillers.

“Where are you gonna sleep?”

Jim pointed to the chair next to the bed. “Right there.”

“But I want you to sleep next to me.”

“If you’re asleep you won’t know if I’m next to you or not.”

I suddenly felt overwhelmingly sleepy. “Yeah, I will. I’ll miss you snoring in my ear.”


	14. A Lot to Celebrate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Lucy is still recovering, there's a revelation at the clinic Christmas party.

Both Peter and Kurt came back to stay with us during my recovery. To avoid too much talk in town, they shared the spare bedroom at our house rather than checking into a room at the hotel. Of course, the house was pretty small for four adults - especially one who was six and a half feet tall and built like a semi truck, but we managed well enough, and it gave me a chance to really recover for the first few days.

We went back and forth about telling my mother what had happened to me. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t believe that there was some strange cursed creature in the woods that had a taste for human flesh and tried to bite a chunk out of my shoulder. The problem was that she probably would have believed it, and Jim had promised to pack me up and send me back to her if there was any of that kind of trouble.

“You have to tell her it was a wolf,” I told him the night I got home. “Tell her we were in the woods tracking some lost kid or something, and I got mauled by a wolf.”

“What? Where did this come from?” He helped me get out of the car, and kept his arm around my waist as we walked up the snowy sidewalk to the house.

“Well, you said you’d send me back to her if anything like this happened, and…” I turned around to face him, and couldn’t bring myself to say it.

He shook his head. “I won’t tell her anything if you don’t want me to. But right now, I think you just need to worry about getting yourself inside and up to bed.”

Peter carried in my suitcase. Along with the flowers, the balloons, the fruitcake, basket of oranges, and Power Rangers puzzle that all of and Jim’s and my co-workers and their kids gave to me. He looked a little like Santa Claus in his red winter coat and all of those ribbons and bows.

Inside, Kurt had made me a cup of tea, and set up a nice cozy spot on the sofa. It was complete with blankets, pillows, a prop for my left arm, and a blazing fire to my side. “You look much better today, little lady,” he told me as he helped me over to the sofa.

Peter brought all of my things upstairs, except for the food. Jim put those on the dining room table, then he came in and sat next to me. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs getting into bed?” he asked.

“I’ve been in bed for five days. I’m not that eager to get back into it, believe it or not.”

Peter came downstairs and sat in the chair next to Kurt’s. “You’re sure you cleared them out of the woods?”

Jim nodded. “There was no trace of any others but those two. I’m thinking it was the couple went missing last summer.” He stretched his arm across the sofa behind my head. “Travis went up there, too, and he couldn’t find any other traces. So, I’m pretty sure we’re…”

I was sleepier than I thought. My head rolled over onto his shoulder, and he stopped speaking. “No, go on. I’m just resting,” I told him, closing my eyes. I could hear his heartbeat quickening, and felt his hand come down and rest on my shoulder.

“Yeah, pretty sure we’re free of ‘em now.”

The room fell silent other than the crackling of the fire.

“It is not a game anymore, is it?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know that it ever has been,” Kurt told him. “Do you still have those papers I brought you?”

“Yeah. Got ‘em upstairs somewhere.” Jim’s voice was comforting. I almost didn’t care what he was saying or what they were talking about.

“Anytime you’re ready, my friend. Just let me know.” I heard Kurt come over toward us and take the cup of tea out of my right hand and put it on the table.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

Jim put his hand on the top of my head. “Nothing. Just some paperwork Kurt’s going to help me with.” He paused for a few moments. “When I get around to filling it all out.”

“You shouldn’t put off things like that. Especially if it’s important.” My speech was a little slurred from all of the pain medications running through my body. “‘Cause what if something happens to you and you didn’t get it done. Then someone else has to come in and do it for you.”

I heard Kurt chuckle under his breath, then clear his throat. “Yes, my friend, you should take care of these things before someone else comes in and does it for you.”

It’s funny how you can feel gestures happening even without seeing them.

“That’s not very nice,” Peter told him.

“Yeah, well, I ain’t never been accused of being very nice, have I?” Jim said.

“I think you’re pretty nice,” I sighed.

“What is this? I just can’t win tonight?” Jim huffed.

I opened my eyes and sat up. “Winning is boring if you do it all the time. You learn a lot more by losing once in awhile. And then save the winning for the really important things. Just look at me. I totally lost this particular fight, but then you came by and won it for me, and I learned a lot.”

“Like what?” Kurt asked.

“Like the fact that my blood doesn’t have a soporific or euphoric effect on a creature like that.”

“That’s true,” Jim said.

“And that I should listen when I’m given instructions. I think the only reason that thing saw me was because I came out from behind the rock for a second to see what was going on.” I shrugged with my good shoulder. “Live and learn, right?”

“What do you think your blood would to to a man?” Peter asked.

“At this point, I have no idea. Probably taste like cherry cordial, or root beer, or mulled wine, or whatever it is that person wants at the time. I could take off the bandages here if you want to try it out.”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” all three of them said in unison.

“No, the risks far outweigh the rewards. There’s no telling what would happen to you. And you being injured right now? It is a bad idea.” Kurt’s voice cracked, and I could hear him speaking in a light German accent.

  
  
  


Maria dropped off the invitation on her way home from work one morning. It was the last week of November, and Peter, Kurt, and Jim were hanging Christmas lights on the house and garage. Maria’s kids were in the back seat of the car, and from my place watching from the kitchen window, I could see they were having a great time watching the three men decorate.

It was for the Christmas party at the clinic.

It was apparently something they held every year during regular working hours. The clinic was already decorated, but apparently they would have food, they’d get a bunch of candy canes and  Dr. Murphy would dress up as Mrs. Claus to hand them out. All friends, family, and everyone in town was invited to drop in.

Of course, I hadn’t been back to work yet after my injuries but still, I wanted to go. Both Dr. Green and Dr. Murphy came in, and Jake said he would come back after 1, so we would have nearly all of our staff at the party in the afternoon.

The catering came in around noon, and there was a buffet in the lounge with turkey, ham, lasagna, and all of the sides. Plus, just about everyone brought in cookies or some kind of holiday-themed jell-o dish.

Even St. Theresa’s, the hospital of over 2000 employees, never went all-out like this. And there were only 30 of us working in the clinic.

Jim and I arrived around noon, with Travis, Peter, and Kurt. Kurt, of course, wore his human disguise, but he was still wearing his collar and suit.

“So happy you could all make it here today.” Candice told us. “We have regular patients out here, but there’s a real party in the back. Dr. Murphy has cleared out the sleeping area, and opened the partition between that and the lounge so we’ll have more room.” I still suspected Peter might feel a little cramped. “Come on to the back.”

“In Chicago, this would never happen. Everything is with pass codes and magnetic keys and still there is the fear of someone stealing drugs.” Peter shook his head and smiled.

“Well, the drugs are all locked up, we keep the pass codes and keys to the lab, computer stations, and phlebotomy equipment. And then there’s CCTV.” I showed them into the lounge. “I think the fact that everyone knows everyone is a big help, too.”

Jim took my hand as we went inside. I realized that he hadn’t met half of the staff before. After introducing him to Candice, Dr. Murphy, Annette Mussman (our phlebotomist), and Mark, our custodian, I let him mingle, and went over to talk to Jake.

“Thanks for taking care of me,” I told him. “I haven’t really seen you since my recovery.”

“Your arm is working fine now?” He asked with a smile.

“Well, I still don’t have full movement in my shoulder, and the outer part of my hand is kind of slow from the nerve damage, but my physical therapist said…”

I stopped. Someone near me was talking just a bit too loud about something they ought not have even known.

“Heard she’s got an M-gene.”

“What? No! She can’t be.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And she seems so normal, too.”

“Well, if you think about it, no normal person would get bitten like that.”

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, nearly spitting with rage. I felt Jake put his hand on my arm, and I looked up at him. He just shook his head and mouthed out “it’s not worth it.”

“Do you think he knows?”

“Who? Jim?”

“If he doesn’t…”

“He does, and he doesn’t care, and neither should you,” Dr. Green’s voice boomed in the room. “Fine, you all know now. That’s the point of this little conversation, isn’t it?”

I looked over to who he was talking to, and recognized Mrs. Killian and Mrs. Andersen. I’d treated their kids, and here they were bad-mouthing me in front of my co-workers.

“If you don’t want someone with a mutant gene at your holiday party, then you can just get the hell out of here. Lucy’s a fantastic nurse, and an asset to this town.”

Jim was grinning from ear to ear, showing off his teeth. I thought Kurt was about to burst a seam, keeping his laughter inside, and Peter just stared off into a corner.

“And you know what? She’s not the only one. Oh, you don’t even know how many times you and your families lives have been saved by mutants, so if you seriously have a problem with that, then you have no business celebrating with us.”

There was a call up front. Dr. Murphy moved to answer, but Dr. Green held his hand up. “No, that’s okay, I’ve got this one.”

As he left, Jim came over to me. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I shrugged with  my good shoulder. “It’s nothing I haven’t been through before. Although before, I didn’t have my boss defending me - more like ignoring the problem until the next day when he could fire me.”

Jim hugged me. “Well, it’s different now. There aren’t as many people who have been taught to hate us out here.”

“Us?” Jake asked. I had forgotten he was standing next to me. “You, too?”

Jim smiled. “Yup. My friends over there, too. Oh, if you’ve got something against us, you might as well fess up right now.”

Jake smiled at him, then laughed. He leaned down and whispered between us. “Why would I have something against people who are just like me?”

  
  


As I stood there in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to finish, I decided we needed to get a larger coffee pot. Jim could down one carafe alone,  and with all of his friends showing up, our house seemed more like a cafe than a home at times.

It was a good thing Kurt and I preferred tea. That night we found out Jake preferred tea, as well.

“So, what is it that you do?” Peter asked him as I brought the teapot and a collection of mismatched mugs into the dining room.

“I’m a nursing tech and lab tech at the clinic.” Jake told him. “And I can also break inorganic and a few organic compounds down into their original state just using my hands. It’s almost like running a current through a wire.”

“Wow, that’s really cool!” I set the tea things down and ran over to our recycling bin.

“What are you doing now?” Jim asked, leaning his head back over the sofa.

I took out an empty spaghetti sauce jar and handed it to Jake. “Okay, so something like this?”

He took the jar, and I went back to the sofa and sat in Jim’s lap. He gave me a funny look. “What? There’s no room with you and Peter sitting here.”

Instead of protesting, he wrapped his arms around me and leaned his chin on my good shoulder.

“This will work for a demonstration,” Jake told us. He put the teapot and mugs on the table and set the tea tray in his lap. Holding the jar in one hand, he put his other hand on top of the lid. After a few moments, the entire thing began to crumble, and soon there was just a pile of sand in his hand and on the tray.

“That’s awesome!” I told him. “So, that’s how you saved Mr. Langley? You knew he had taken an overdose of oxycodone and aspirin.”

“And after he had vomited as much out of him as he could, I changed most of what was left of the opiates into just poppy juice, and the aspirin into carbon and water.” He brushed the sand his hand and set the tray aside. “So, what is it that you do?” He looked across from one of us to the others.

“Oh, for me, I just change the taste of things. And the smell. And there’s this thing with my saliva and blood that can trigger, um, emotional reactions in people.” I reached across the table, picked up a sugar cube, and then handed it to Jake. “Here, try.”

Jake smiled. “Green apple. That’s pretty neat.”

“It was really handy when I was working in the pediatric ward with eating disorders, and kids with emotional problems.”

Kurt set his mug down. “I suppose I’m next,” he dropped his disguise and stretched his arms and legs in front of him.

“You’re blue.”

“Yes.” He pushed himself up on the arms of his chair into a handstand, then flipped back and up to land, perched on the tiny ledge of the closed front window, his tail stretching out to one side. “I would show you my other ability, but it’s too cold to take you on a jaunt up by the mill tonight.”

“He can open one side of this place and open it on the other side of another place.” Peter explained. “As for me,” Peter didn’t even put down his coffee mug as his entire body covered itself in shiny metal.

Jake was impressed. And he looked relieved.

Kurt went back in his chair, perched in it on his toes, his tail waving happily behind him. “And Jim, over there…”

He held me closer with one arm, almost in a protective way as he extended his other hand. I heard that familiar “snikt” sound. Jim smiled. He reached over to the table, stabbed a walnut with his claw, and brought it back. “I also never go to the doctor. I heal very quickly.”

Jake applauded. “And you have more friends like you?”

“Here and there,” Peter told him, slipping back into his flesh. “We are mostly scattered right now. With all that’s been happening, it seems to be safer for everyone if we are not all gathered in one place.”

I clasped my hands together and sat up in Jim’s lap. “Welcome to the family. If you can call it that.”

Jim leaned his chin on my shoulder again. “Yeah, I think we can call it that.”


	15. 'Tis the Season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy's mom comes to visit, and the spirit of the season changes everything.

I was recovering well through the first couple weeks of December. Jim had started back at work, so he had Peter and Kurt take turns watching over me while he was gone. I didn’t want to accuse him of being overprotective, but it was getting a little ridiculous when he also had a new Stark Industries security alarm installed in our little house.

“You don’t know what he’s capable of.” Jim touched my cheek and let out a long breath before heading out the door.

“Wait!” I followed him outside. It really was well below freezing, and I was in my slippers and housecoat.

“You’ll catch your death of cold!” he scolded me. I looked over his shoulder and waved to Travis who was waiting for Jim in his warm truck.

I ran up to Jim and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don’t worry so much. We don’t even know if he’s here yet.”

Jim scratched the back of his head, then put on his hat. “I just have a feeling that something’s coming into town and it’s gonna turn everything upside down.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I hate that kind of feeling the most.”

Jake had also been dropping in a few times a week after he’d finished his work. He and Kurt had struck up a close friendship during those visits. He’d been without a mutant friend for so long, and Kurt was more than just a father figure in the church.

“You would enjoy talking with some of our other friends. Especially Hank and Reed,” I heard Kurt tell him.

I moved from the kitchen to the living room. “Reed Richards? You know him?” Jake asked.

“Well, yes. But I wasn’t sure you would know who he is.”

“Are you kidding? He’s a genius nuclear physicist.”

I flopped down on my spot on the sofa. “So, invite him up here for Christmas and New Year’s.”

“Well, he’s probably in another dimension with Susan and the kids. But Hank, on the other hand, is most likely just going to sit around and read. Maybe play with his chemistry experiments or whatever it is he’s up to in that lab of his.” Kurt did a flip and perched himself on the mantle of the fireplace. “I could invite him.”

Kurt’s fangs were even longer than Jim’s.

“My mother’s coming to visit, too.”

Kurt landed in front of the fireplace. “Your mother? I haven’t seen her in decades! Well, this should be a merry time, indeed.”

“You mother is accepting of your condition?” Jake asked.

I had forgotten that there were those out there whose parents refused to accept their mutant children. In fact, most parents of mutant children would try to find some other family or institution to take them so that they wouldn’t have to deal with all the chaos that the abilities might bring into their lives.

“Yeah. I’m pretty lucky.”

Jake nodded. “My parents abandoned me as soon as they found out what I could do. And then I just had to make sure the foster family didn’t find out. By the time they did, I was ready to leave Pakistan and go to university in Canada. That was eight years ago, when I was seventeen.”

Jake’s story was all too common. “Well, I’m sure she’d love to mother you for a while when she’s here. You’re still young enough to need a mother-figure.”

**  
  
**

I loved having my mother there with me. Even though she had every holiday season off from her work, I had only seen her a few times since I left college. Most times, I was too busy to take any time off from work, and then there was Bradley and Carmen’s invitations and their insistence that she could not miss one Christmas with the grandchildren.

But this year was different. Bradley, like the town of Peace River, accepted me as being married to Jim and settling into a new life here. Although he tried to convince my mother that she needed to spend the holidays at his house again, she insisted that I deserved as much time with her, and she wanted to get to know this new husband of mine.

Now, I love my brother, but I love it even more when mom stands up to him and chooses me.

It had been a wet season so far, and the snow was already falling thick across Western Alberta, so Travis drove Jim and I down to Edmonton to pick mom up at the airport. It was just as well. With all of her bags and the packages she had with her, there wouldn’t have been enough room in the Dodge.

“I’m so happy to see you again,” she almost cried in my ear as we hugged. “Let me look at you. Your shoulder looks like it’s healing just fine, thank God. I knew wolves were bad up here, but I’d never heard of one attacking someone before.”

“My shoulder will be fine. It’s just still a little stiff from where the scar tissue hasn’t broken up yet. But I’m in physical therapy, and it’s working wonders.”

She let me go and went right up to Jim, bringing him into a tight hug. “And you! It’s so good to see you again.”

“Uh, yes, ma’am. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”

“Years, dear. Call me mom.”

“He won’t call you mom,” I told her, loading the back of the truck with the smaller of her suitcases. “He’s older than you.”

Jim shrugged. “She’s not wrong, Mrs. Williams.”

‘Well, we’ll see about that.”

**  
  
**

My mother had crossed two time zones to come and visit me. By the time we got home, she was not only feeling the jet lag, but her body was thrown off by it being so dark so early. It was not yet five, and there was virtually no light the whole drive up to Peace River. I let Jim and Travis bring her things into the house, and I showed her into the spare room so she could settle in and get some sleep.

Kurt had gone to the home of this friend of theirs, Hank, to invite him to come up and visit for the holidays, so Peter had very kindly moved their things into the attic to make room for my mother.

“The attic’s a little small for you, though. Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I asked after dinner.

Peter shrugged. “I’ve had worse. This is not so bad, really. It is very warm up there, and I can hear and see everything in the woods through that window.”

“You’re still worried that he might come here?”

“No, I’m sure he’ll come here. It is just a question about when and where he will show himself. He is insane, but he does have a cunning mind. That is a dangerous combination. It means that he will plan.” Peter took his dishes into the kitchen where Jim had already started the washing up. “Logan, it is time.”

Jim looked up at the clock. “Oh, it is, isn’t it?” He put down the sponge and took off the yellow dish gloves. “Sorry, Lucy. I’ll finish cleaning up later.”

“No, I’ll go ahead and finish this time. You two… just go.”

“You’re the best.” He patted my head on his way into the living room.

It was 7:00. The Flames were playing the Rockies.

**  
  
**

The next day, my mother and I decorated the entire interior of the house with the things she brought from home. Some of the ornaments and decorations I remembered from when I was a kid, and then there were dozens of new things that she had bought and made. She had knit Christmas stockings for both Jim and I, and brought in some old photos of me sitting on Santa’s lap to put on the mantle.

“Where do you want this Mr. and Mrs. Snowman set, Mrs. Williams?” Jim asked her.

“Over there on the table, dear. And please, call me mom.”

“Can’t.” He smiled. “I ain’t your son.”

“It’s okay. She wants everyone to call her mom,” I told Jim, hanging some tinsel on the tree.

Peter stood in the doorway. “She has not asked me to call her mom.”

I learned what it meant to “look daggers at someone” that day by watching the glare that Jim shot at Peter.

When the tree was decorated, wreaths hung, bows tied, and candles lit, she started taking photos. First, it was just pictures of the fireplace, the yule log, the candles set up on the dining room table. But then she wanted pictures of all of us wearing Santa hats, and standing in front of the stockings, and then just Jim and I in front of the tree. “I want pictures of you two and your first Christmas together.”

“Mom, you don’t have to do this. We’re not really married, remember?”

“You keep reminding me. But still, have you two spent Christmas together yet?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, mom, we haven’t.”

“Then it’s your first together. Now stand over there, a little closer and look at the camera.”

Mom gets her way. Most of the time, her way is harmless enough, but sometimes there’s a bit of sadness and pain that comes with her little ideas. Like the pain I felt standing next to my pretend husband in front of our real tree with my real family, and our real friends.

How anything could feel so right and not right at the same time, I’d never imagined. Jim wrapped his arm around me, but I could feel that he wasn’t looking at mom’s camera. His eyes were fixed on me and my painful pretend smile.

Bing Crosby was singing in the background, and it felt like everyone was staring at me. The only other sound in the room was the crackling of the fire.

“I’m sorry. My shoulder’s hurting a little,” I lied. “I think I’m going upstairs to lie down for a while.” My voice was cracking, and it was only through sheer willpower that I didn’t cry.

I didn’t stay around long enough for anyone to say a word, and when I got upstairs, I didn’t even go into our bedroom. I sat there, near the top of the stairs at the end of the hall.

A few moments later, I heard Jim say something about getting some air. Then the front door opened and closed again.

“He really does love her, doesn’t he?” Mom asked.

“Yes. He does.” Peter answered.

I went perfectly still.

“And she has always loved him, too.”

“I suspect so.”

“My daughter is too cautious, Mr. Rasputin.”

“And he will not make the first move, as you say, for fear he may lose what he holds dear.” I heard Peter walk into the other room. “But things will resolve themselves. They always do.”

I went into the bedroom and grabbed my sweater, then raced down the stairs, toed into my boots, and ran out the door.

Jim was standing in the driveway under our outdoor lamppost. He had just lit up a cigar and was pinching the bridge of his nose. When he heard the snow crunching under my feet, he looked up. “Lucy, what are you doing?”

I didn’t answer him. When I was standing directly in front of him, I smiled. I could feel my heart in my throat. “I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

“What?”

“Pretending. Everything. Pretending that we’re married. I don’t want to pretend. I don’t want to pretend I’m in love with you. I just want... I just want to be in love with you. I just want to be married to you, and I want to sleep with you instead of next to you every night.”

“Lucy.”

“And I want to kiss you.”

It took him a few moments staring at me before he dropped his cigar in the snow and closed the gap between us. And for the first time ever, it felt as if we were doing things right.

His kiss was cautious at first. More cautious than it needed to be. He paused for a moment after the first kiss. “I hope you know what you’re doing. ‘Cause I ain’t stopping myself this time.”

“Oh, believe me, I know. And even if you tried to stop, I’d probably kiss you and lick you until you lost control, anyway.”

I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice the car pulling up as he was kissing me again. Or hear the car doors open and close when he lifted me up and started walking toward the house. And I’m absolutely positive he didn’t hear Kurt call out to him, or the other man ask what was going on as he kicked open the door, still kissing me, and then kicked it closed again.

My mother came in to see what was going on. “Oh, well, look at you two.”

“Sorry, mom,” he said, lifting me up and over his shoulder, “there’s something we need to do. And it requires a bed and at least an hour.”

“Make me some grandchildren, Lucy!” she shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “I’m tired of visiting your brother’s brats every year.”

“Alright, mom! I’ll do my best!


	16. A Spirit in the Mountains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just after Hank comes to stay with them, Travis shows up with a personal search mission.

I believe that the next morning, every single muscle in my body was sore. My shoulder was aching with the worst kind of stabbing pain, my back hurt, my arms hurt, and pretty much everything else was either throbbing, sore, or stiff.

But I was wrapped up and cradled in the warmest, most amazing embrace. My head was resting comfortably on his chest with his arms wrapped around my body, holding the blanket in place over us. His chest rising and falling gave comfort to my sore body, and our legs were intertwined, with his feet resting at my ankles.

I shifted my arm to try and relieve a little of the pain in my shoulder, but only exasperated it. As I drew in a sharp breath, I felt his body tense.

“Are you hurting?” he whispered.

“Just my arm. A little.”

He kissed me again, then gently rolled me over onto my back. “Let me see if I can do something.” Jim leaned over me and gently ran his fingers along the scar on my shoulder. “I wish I could heal you like I heal me,” he whispered.

“I’ll be fine. I think I just need to stretch it out.”

I don’t really know how to describe the look on Jim’s face when he looked at me. I think there was still some disbelief, but the way he looked at me made me feel like the most beautiful thing in the world. He leaned down and kissed my shoulder, then turned his head and kissed my neck.

“We should get up,” I whispered into his ear. “But I don’t know if I can move.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“No regrets, love. Seriously, I do not regret a single thing. Other than this stupid shoulder that decided to act up and take me out of your arms.” I regretted the words as soon as I had said them. “Oh, God, that sounded awful.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah, that’s pretty bad. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but sappy doesn’t suit you.” He got up and grabbed some sweatpants out of the dresser. “I’ll go downstairs and get your ice packs and hot packs. You just wait here. And try to think of some way of telling me how much you love me that doesn’t sound like a Hallmark Card.”

Like I could move if I tried.

I looked out the window. It was still dark, but I knew it was probably mid-morning. A few minutes later, Jim came bounding up the stairs with a hot pack in one hand, an ice pack in the other, and a huge grin on his face. “Hey, come downstairs, darlin’. You gotta meet someone.”

I tried to push myself up, letting the arm on my left side fall down beside the bed, and nearly doubled over in pain. “A little help?”

Before I finished asking, Jim was at my side, holding the ice pack on my shoulder while he gently rotated my arm in tiny circles. “Hank’s here!” he told me.

“Fuzzy blue guy, right?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Saw him last night. He and Kurt were getting out of the car. You.. ouch!”

“Sorry.”

“You were too busy getting me in bed yesterday to notice them.”

A wicked grin crept across his face. “Yeah, my mind certainly wasn’t on greeting houseguests.”

He gave my arm one more twist and then pulled gently on it. “Maybe you do have some kind of healing powers on other people. This is the best my shoulder’s felt in days.”

I raised my arm over my head, opening myself up for Jim to climb on top of me again. Laughing, I tried pushing him away. “Come on, you said you wanted me to meet Hank, right?”

Jim smiled. “Get up. Let’s get some breakfast. It’s almost ten.”

I managed to get myself out of bed on wobbly legs, only needing a hand once in getting myself to the bathroom. Jim brought in some jeans, panties, and an old sweatshirt, then proceeded to start brushing his teeth and brushing back his hair like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And it was. We’d been basically married without the physical contact for the past five months.

He pulled on a white tee and one of his plaid flannel shirts, then, when I was dressed, he held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go meet Hank.”

  
  


Our house was full. It was more than full, it was overflowing. Jake had come over to meet Hank McCoy, as well, and what with Peter, Kurt, Hank, Jake, mom, Jim, and myself, we had run out of chairs, we were running out of mugs, and there certainly weren’t enough forks to go around. Peter announced that he didn’t need to sit. Jim extended one of his claws and insisted he didn’t need a fork. Not to be outdone, Kurt jumped on the fireplace mantle again (one of his favorite perches to this day), and pointed out he didn’t need a chair, either. Hank looked at me over the rims of his glasses and asked if our chandelier was bolted to a support beam, or just screwed into the ceiling.

I seriously had the best family ever in that house.

Then Travis drove up. He had known about Jim and his mutant powers from the first time they went out on the trail together. And it was never an issue with him. He told us one time that his grandfather had stories of mountain men with the strength of bears and fangs that would make a wolf look like a puppy.

He walked into a house to be greeted by the scene of to a blue imp-like man perched on the fireplace, a man of metal standing in the corner, a furry blue beast hanging upside-down from the chandelier playing a game on his smartphone, and Jake attempting to break down a fruitcake into something more edible, but only ending up with a pile of compost and some “candied fruit.”

“Aha! I knew they weren’t real!” I shouted as the fruitcake fell apart. I picked up one of the candied cherries, changed the flavor to a cherry liqueur and tossed it at Kurt, who snatched it out of the air with his tail and popped it into his mouth.

“I am simply amazed that you can take something so vile as plastic fruit and make it taste like a cherry cordial,” he told me, smiling with one of his toothiest grins.

Meanwhile, mom just sat in the corner, knitting.”

“Aah, so these are your friends, then?” Travis asked Jim.

“Yup. Well, some of them, anyway. Come on in, take a seat. Some of us are having a contest to see who can go the longest without using a chair.” Jim motioned to the chair across from the sofa, then he came over, picked me up from where I was sitting, turned around and plopped himself down where I had been sitting, only with me in his lap.

I moved to get up.

“Oh, no, you’re not. Stay right here.” Jim told me. “So, what brings you out here this morning?” he asked. “I didn’t get a call, did I?”

Travis shook his head. “No, they haven’t called us in for anything. But I was wondering if you might help me out with something a little more personal. I was hoping you could help me find my grandfather.”

Jake set aside the remains of the fruitcake and sat forward in the sofa. “You’re looking for Mingan again? Did you find another lead? Do you know if he is still alive?”

This time, Jim let me move out of his lap and sit on the arm of the sofa.

Hank jumped down from the chandelier. “Mingan. That’s a Blackfoot name.”

“Yes. Travis is my nickname. My real name is Tihkoosue. That’s sometimes too hard for my co-workers to remember.”

“How long has your grandfather been missing?” Jim asked.

“Five months.” Travis took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Kurt climbed down from the mantle and went to stand next to Peter.

My mom dropped her knitting into her lap. “Well, I would say this is certainly a house of resources if nothing else.”

“He went out looking for…” Travis shook his head. “Looking for a legend. Something that has never existed, but he had heard the stories since he was a little boy.”

“Did you know him?” I asked Jake. He looked quite upset.

“Yes. I knew him. He told me the story, and I told him about another story we had in my home country. The stories were from Peshawar. Near the mountains.” Jake steepled his fingers and pressed them to his lips.

Travis nodded. “Stories of the creature in the mountains. Of a creature that is part of the mountain, and has the knowledge of the ancient ones. My grandfather was obsessed with those stories. He collected them from all of the First Nations near the mountains. He’s traveled all the way to Alaska for this crazy legend.”

“It isn’t a legend.” Jake shook his head. “There is really something up there. But it’s hard to explain. There aren’t words in this language to describe some things because the English people never believed in it. And if the king or queen didn’t believe, then it didn’t exist, right? I mean, they call us mutants, but is actually a genetic mutation that makes us what we are? Or is it a genetic difference that this language hasn’t found a name for yet?”

Hank nodded, then jumped up and crouched on the arm of the sofa near Jake “All semantics aside, if he went missing five months ago, the trail has likely, if you would pardon the pun in the expression, gone cold.”

“I don’t expect to find him alive.” Travis sounded defeated. “I gave up on that after the first two weeks. But I would like to find his remains. And I know, this is not a good time of year for it, but if we don’t find him before the end of the month, we won’t have a chance to look for him again until May.”

“Then we’ll get started today. Do you know where he was going when he was last seen?” Kurt asked. “Perhaps he left a note, or had some kind of record of where he would be.”

Travis shook his head. “He took his notebook with him. All I have are the stories he had written down about the mountain spirits and a list of places where he might find them. I have gone out to look in those places, though, and found nothing.”

“Well, now you’ve got company. It’s supposed to be warmer today, and no snow for a change,” Jim told him.

I got up, went over to the front door, and brought my EMT bag down from the hook where it was hanging.

“You’re not coming with us!” Jim told me firmly from across the room.

“Oh really? You don’t want an injured woman who is useless in tracking and investigating tagging along when you go up into the mountains where she was injured to help you find the probable corpse of someone she’s never met before? But I was so looking forward to leaving my mother who has traveled across the continent behind so I could rush head-first into danger.” I went back to the sofa and sat on the arm again. “Of course I’m not going. I have nothing at all to contribute to this venture except moral support and some hot coffee and cocoa when you come back home.”

I put my bag in Jim’s lap and unzipped the top. “And this.” I opened the bag and pointed out each of the different pockets. “Heat packs. Cold packs - which you probably won’t have to use. Thermal blanket, sewing kit, surgical knives. And here’s the important part. Cortisone is with the pink caps, adrenaline has green caps, codeine has yellow caps, and there are these three syringes of some high-dose morphine, don’t ask, with blue caps and the black tape on them. Even if it’s too dark to see, you should be able to feel the tape on those caps and know what you’re reaching for.” I zipped it back up and patted the top.

“You’ve found a woman who’s smart, but not brash and headstrong? That’s a new one for you, Logan,” Hank told him.

“Yeah, Lucy was written on a page out of a completely different book.”


	17. Shopping for Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Jim and the others are off on a search and rescue, Lucy and her mother go shopping. And Lucy finally gets to meet Jim's long, lost (but not lost long enough) son.

Things happen for reasons. Sure, there are some coincidences, but for the most part, if something major happens in life, it’s because someone or something had chosen just the right time and place for that thing to happen. Be it a conscious or subconscious decision, that explains most of what occurs in life.

That being said, there is no way to prepare for events over which you have no control. It isn’t my place to tell about the search for Travis’s grandfather. That’s not my story, and if you want hear more about it, you can ask those involved. There are parts of the story that will come out later, but I’m getting ahead of myself if I tell them now.

No, when they left, it was just my mother and I sitting in the house by ourselves. And since everyone else would be completely out of the town, it was the perfect time to go Christmas shopping. That meant either Sears, or Riverdrive mall.

“Honestly, mom, neither place has a lot to offer, but at least the mall has a donut shop where we can get some coffee.”

Mom was driving the Dodge while I sat in the passenger seat. I had my arm up in a sling again, to relieve the pain, and she seemed to be enjoying driving a car from her era. “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine. I already have presents for you and Jim. I just want to get some little things for the others. You know, just so there’s something we can put in their stockings.”

I wasn’t actually sure what anyone would like. Peter could get anything he wanted in Chicago, Kurt didn’t show an affinity toward any material goods, and I’d only met Hank that morning. As for Jake, we had agreed to exchange shifts at work as a gift. He’d take one of mine whenever I wanted him to, and I would take one of his.

We pulled into the mall and ended up having to take a parking space clear out near the main road. The place was incredibly busy with holiday shoppers, including people who had come in from some of the outlying townships and farms.

Mom went directly into the home goods store and started looking at linens. “You don’t have enough towels in your house. Or blankets. What if the heater goes out in the middle of winter?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, Kurt prefers his spot above the fireplace anyway, Peter’s from Chicago and knows how to deal with the cold, and as for Hank and Jim,” I shrugged. “They’re both kind of covered in fur.”

“Hmmm. I like this one. Green is a good color for your house. Forest green, or maybe olive?” She hadn’t had a chance to do any sort of housewarming for me, and I could tell that the chance to decorate her daughter’s house was giving her great happiness. “I tell you what, mom. My arm’s kind of aching, and I’d like to sit somewhere and prop it up. How about we meet at the donut shop in half an hour for some coffee, then we can head down to the bookstore.”

Mom patted me on the good shoulder. “Yes, go and rest. I’ll meet you there. What color does Peter like?” she asked.

“Yellow, as far as I can tell.”

On my way to the donut shop. I passed by a kiosk where people were selling charms for cell phones. I bought five that I thought would all be rather appropriate, picked up a few sheets of colorful scrapbooking paper at the hobby store, and went over to sit for a while and wrap up my little token gifts.

There was a charm of a little blue cat, another one that was blue, red, and black and had a small silver cross hanging from the end, and another one had a cowboy hat and a beer bottle on it.

“Oh, that one’s perfect for him,” a deep male voice told me from the other side of my table. The man sat in the chair opposite me and picked up the charm. “Just. Perfect.”

His manner set me on edge, and my senses were absolutely thrumming. He was a mutant. When he looked up and smiled at me, I instantly knew who he was. He looked just like his father.

“I think so,” I told him with a shrug. I took a drink of my coffee, picked up the rest of the charms and stuffed them into my purse.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“That’s a really tough question. I can recognize who you are, but I actually don’t really know you at all.” My right hand was shaking. I was glad that one was in my lap, and only my left hand, which still had nerve damage and therefore was only twitching occasionally, was on the table.

“Interesting. You’re not afraid of me? Then maybe I should start calling you ‘mom’.” He sat back and crossed his legs. He was dressed in jeans and a dark olive green t-shirt, and wore a dingy old coat over that. There was a dirty baseball cap on his head, covering a mop of messy black hair. “So many of these people are afraid of me just by looking at my appearance and stature.”

“Yeah, so many people are stupid, though.” I told him, thinking back to the Christmas party at work. “And they think mutants are dangerous.”

“Mutants are dangerous.”

“Not all mutants.”

He stared at me for a moment with a questioning look.

I sighed. Just like with his father, I would put on the magic trick show. Only this time, I wanted to try something else.

Which, I will admit, was very very stupid of me.

I lifted one finger, then put it in my mouth. Now, I should have just left it at that. I should have just spit in my coffee and let him drink it, having it turn into a nice and sweet amontillado sherry that would leave him with a raging erection for four hours. But instead, when I licked my finger, I pulled off a hangnail, and let a little bit of the blood mix into my coffee as I stirred it.

Stupid.

“Go ahead. Check just how dangerous I really am.”

It was a challenge, and he, apparently, loved challenges. He bellowed with laughter, causing all the people around us to look over and stare.

“Alright, then. But if anything happens to me, I will slaughter that woman, over there,” he pointed in the direction of the home goods store where my mother was haggling over a quilt.

I had known this sort of thing would happen eventually. And to be honest, there would have been nothing I, my mother, or the entire police force of Peace River could do had he decided to go on a violent rampage in the shopping mall during the busiest weekend of the holiday season.

So, although what I did was kind of stupid, it was also pretty much the only thing I could do.

As he reached for the coffee cup, he smiled, and I noticed two claws were poking ever-so-slightly out of the back of his hand.

“Bottoms up?”

I just sat there and smiled at him, waiting for his reaction to his butterscotch milkshake.

Something changed in his face as he sipped the coffee. At first, I thought he was just confused, but then there was something else behind the confusion. “That’s… that’s a pretty neat trick you got there.”

“Yeah, like I said, not very dangerous.”

“You could change the taste of poison,” he challenged me, pointing his finger directly in my face. “Then you’d be terrifying.”

I sighed. “It would still smell like poison, look like poison, and all someone would have to do is wait a few minutes, and it would go back to tasting like poison, too.”

He took another drink of the coffee. “This one’s not going back to coffee.”

“What do you want from me?” I finally asked.

“I wanted to meet you. I wanted to see if it would be a better idea to kill you out here and string your carcass from that lamppost by your house for my dear old dad to find you, or if maybe I should try something a little more dramatic.”

I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes as he laughed heartily at his own humor.

“And what did you decide?”

“I decided I want to think about you. You’re not nearly as stupid as most women my father’s bagged over the years. And you’re not weak with fear of me like you should be.”

I smiled. “I was a first responder; an EMT. Then I worked in the oncology ward, the pediatric ward, helped kids with eating disorders who were starving themselves to death, and also the ER and rape crisis unit in one of the worst hospitals in downtown Atlanta. I’ve seen the worst of the worst happen to the human race.” His smile widened as I spoke. “The worst you can do is torture and kill me and everyone I love. That’s not actually that bad, when I consider the alternatives.” I shrugged my right shoulder.

“You’re injured.”

“You care?”

“I’m amused. What got you?”

I reached over and took back my coffee cup. “Something big and white that likes to eat human flesh.”

“Windigo. Interesting. I think I like it up here.” Daken kicked his chair back, sending it across the floor to crash into a booth and topple on its side. “I’m going. I’ll let you know what I decide about you when we meet again. In the meantime, tell my dear ol’ man I’ll be looking for my present outside your house on Christmas morning.”

I watched him leave, passing by the home goods store, and waving to my mother on his way out of the mall.

I still couldn’t will my right hand to stop shaking, even a good ten minutes after he had left.

**  
  
**

Jim was more than irate when I told him what had transpired.

Okay, back up, first, when they got home, they all looked tired and frustrated, and I probably should have kept my mouth shut about what had happened to me, but for some reason I didn’t. After they had all sat down and settled in an uncomfortable silence into their coffee, tea, cocoa, and beer, I told him.

“So, I finally had a chance to meet your son today.” My right hand was trembling in the same way it was before, and I swallowed a lump in my throat that felt like it was the size of a grapefruit.

Jim’s face lost all its color, and his eyes turned fierce, almost like an animal.

Kurt jumped down from the back of a chair and came directly up to me. “Are you alright? Did he do anything? Are you sure it was him?”

Hank came over to my side and picked up my hand. “You’re scared. You’re still scared? Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nodded, but then felt a familiar hand on my elbow. “Upstairs. Now,” he growled.

Jim led me upstairs and sat me down on the bed, then paced around the bedroom three or four times as he started at least a half a dozen sentences and never got out more than half a word.

Finally, he just stood there, staring out the window.

“Do you want to know what happened?” I asked.

He nodded his head, still staring out the window with his back to me.

“He sat across from me in Danny’s Donuts. First, he just started talking, then he was curious about my mutant power. So, I changed my coffee into a butterscotch milkshake.” I shook my head. “Well, no, that isn’t all. He threatened mom, and I figured he could pretty much slaughter the entire mall if he wanted, to I took a chance and put a little bit of my blood in the cup, too.”

Jim spun around. He was gritting his teeth, and I could see his eyes were red. “Anyway, all he did was talk and threaten, and then he left, saying he would be looking for his present outside our house Christmas morning.”

He nodded, then came over and sat on the bed next to me. “You’re okay?” he asked.

“The way I saw it, the only chance I had was to make him interested in me in some way or other. It would still be more likely than not that he’d come after me and kill me if I did anything else, but I have found that if someone thinks you’re interesting, then they will come back to learn more.”

“He’s insane.”

“Maybe. But he’s not stupid. And I think he was looking for something. It felt like he was trying to connect with me in some way that didn’t have anything to do with murder. At least not today.” I leaned my head on Jim’s shoulder. “Why would he seek me out when I was completely alone, only to talk to me, if he wasn’t at least a little curious without wanting to resort to violence?”

“I don’t know. But he certainly didn’t come here for a Norman Rockwell Christmas reunion.”

“No, it reminds me more of Tim Burton than Normal Rockwell. Almost like someone who wants to go through the motions and make the gestures, but doesn’t actually understand the purpose behind it all.”

“He’s no Jack Skellington, Lucy. He has more in common with Charles Manson.”

I paused for a few moments. “He was interested in the Windigo.”

“You told him?” Jim sounded angry.

“I didn’t have much choice. He noticed my shoulder, and when he asked what happened, I could either tell him the truth - which he would find out anyway - and keep him interested. Or I could lie, and he’d get angry with me and probably take it out on my mother.”

Jim brought his hand up behind me and placed it on the back of my head.

“It could have gone so badly,” he told me quietly.

“But it didn’t. I know what I’ve heard about him, and what you and the others have told me, but that wasn’t… It was like he was a little restrained today.”

Jim nuzzled my face and pulled me closer. “You did alright, little lady. Actually, I’m not sure things could have gone any better if one of us was there with you. Especially with all of those people shopping.”

“What should we get him for Christmas?” I asked, staring at the wall.

“What?”

“He said to leave his present outside on Christmas morning. What should we get him?”

“Do you actually think he was serious?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think we should get him something.”

“Like what?”

“Like beer and a new Flames cap.”

“The Flames are my team.”

“Yeah. That’s how he’ll know it’s from you.”

**  
  
**

The next few days were relatively uneventful. Jim refused to leave me and my mother alone in the house, so Peter and Kurt took turns staying with us while the others continued their search for Travis’s grandfather. I think everyone knew that actually finding the old man was a long shot, but long shots are what Jim and his friends did best, so they put everything they had into the search.

Meanwhile, my mother and I wrapped presents, talked about life in Canada, and life in the University, and watched an awful lot of public television.

That is, until my mother started asking the important questions.

“There’s something going on aside from looking for Travis’s grandfather, and I think I ought to know about it.” My mother didn’t look up from her knitting.

Peter looked at me and and shrugged like he didn’t know what to say.

“It has to do with Jim’s past,” I sighed. “Jim has a son who has a lot of the same mutant powers as him, and he’s just a little bit psychotic.”

“And that was who drank your coffee in the mall?”

“Yeah.”

“What did the coffee taste like?” Mom paused in the middle of a row to wait for my answer.

“Butterscotch milkshake.”

She continued knitting. “Oh. And there will probably be trouble out of this, I assume.”

“Probably.”

Peter left the room and went into the kitchen. I don’t know if he was uncomfortable with the conversation, or just thought I was handling it fine on my own.

“I see. So, this trouble; is it life-threatening?”

I shook my head. “At this point, I don’t know. Well, sort of. I mean, he threatened lives when we were talking in the mall, but I don’t think he really meant it.”

“He meant it,” I heard Peter say from the kitchen.

“Okay, yeah, so he probably meant it at that time, but it might be different now.”

My mom set her knitting down and looked directly at me. “You spiked his drink with your blood?!”

I let out a long breath of air and gave her an apologetic smile. “What else should I have done?”

She went back to her knitting. “Nothing, dear. You did what you could do. I suppose now it’s just a matter of seeing how it all works out.”

Peter came back in from the kitchen. “Mrs. Williams. You speak as if you know what the little lady’s blood will do.”

**“Of course I know what it will do. I’m her mother!”**


	18. Home for the Holiday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas this year is clouded with tragedy.

It was December 23 when the search party came back early.

My mother had a migraine, and went upstairs to sleep it off, which left Peter and me in the living room playing cribbage when everyone arrived.

They had found the remains of Travis’s grandfather.

Travis drove everyone home, and left before even coming in to visit. The coroner had the body down at the station for the examiner, and Travis wanted to be there to hear the results of his findings.

Jim, Kurt, Hank, and Jake came into the house looking somber, although not defeated. Jim went straight to the fridge and brought out two beers. He pulled the caps off of them, and handed one to Jake. “Here, calm yourself down.”

They all sat around the table in silence. Peter went over to the table and stood in his usual corner, just observing the men. I went up behind Jim and draped one arm over his shoulder.

“They’re gonna say it was a wolf or a bear, aren’t they?” Jake finally asked.

Everyone nodded. “Yup,” Jim told him.

“But it wasn’t a wolf or a bear, was it?”

Hank breathed on his hands, then let them rest on the table in front of him. “No, that was not the work of a bear or a wolf. That was from something much, much more powerful.”

“And cunning,” Kurt added.

“Five months,” Jim sighed. “He’d been out there for five months. We’re sure it wasn’t Daken ‘cause we haven’t even been here that long. And if it was more windigos, then they would have eaten him and we’d just find a pile of bones.”

“Poor Travis,” I sighed. I leaned down and pressed my forehead to the top of Jim’s head.

He took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Jim sucked down the rest of his beer and stood. “Come on, Lucy, let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere. I just gotta get my mind off of what I saw today and get to a place where I can think for a while.” I followed him over to the door, and put on my boots. “We’ve got some Christmas shopping to do.”

I looked back at the others. Kurt nodded and motioned for me to go. “I’ll take care of things here. Bring us back some donuts.”

  
  


Jim and I didn’t talk on the way into town. And when we got to Sears, we just sat in the car for a couple of minutes. “You’re not going to ask?”

I shrugged. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready to. You looked like you needed to process what you found for a while. So, when you figure things out, just let me know.”

He leaned over and kissed me. That was about as much of a “thank you” as I could ever hope for. The car started getting cold. “Come on, let’s get inside. The cold never bothers me much, but you’re already starting to turn blue.”

It was true that I was shivering, but I sincerely doubted the blue part. My face, and especially my lips were actually feeling quite warm.

I wasn’t entirely sure what he was shopping for when we went inside. He did go and pick out a Flames cap, and then a leather jacket. We wandered around the departments, looking at the displays, saying hello to the people we knew, and generally just trying to forget about what had happened that day.

After finishing at Sears, we went over to the mall across the street. Danny’s Donuts was full, so we just got coffee and sat on one of the benches out in the mall area.

“Talk to me,” Jim told me.

“What?”

“Talk to me. Get my mind thinking about something else. Anything interesting. Anything that might make me stop going over and over this list of possible suspects.” He was hunched over with his coffee in his hands, elbows on his knees.

I sat back and stretched my feet out in front of me. “Well, mom told me what my blood does to people if they taste it. Want to hear about that?”

His head jerked in my direction. “What? She knew?”

“She’s my mom. Of course she knew. There had to have been at least some point in my past when I’d fallen down and skinned my knee and she had to kiss it better.”

“So, what does it do?”

“It changes the taste of things. But it doesn’t have to be in something. It can be just on its own.”

He sighed. “So, the same as everything else?”

“Not really. Apparently my blood will bring up a taste that will trigger a memory. Like, for my mom, it brought the taste in her mouth of my grandmother’s soup that she ate one time when she had the flu. It seems as if it’s always a good memory - something that will cause a kind of warm feeling inside. And when I was a kid, it lasted for a few hours. So, who knows how long it will last now.”

Jim just stared at me for a while, then he took another drink of his coffee. He shook his head.

“When you were a kid, you said your abilities were useless. I don’t think anyone could have been more wrong.”

“If you had a chance to change things with him, would you?” I asked.

“With… with Daken?”

I nodded. “If you could help him get rid of that anger and violence.”

Jim shook his head. “This isn’t something you can understand. And I don’t even know if he fully understands the anger in him. It took me a long time to come to grips with what I was and what I was doing.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I think I do. My abilities were something that a lot of people considered useful if they could turn the rest of me into a weapon and then wipe out my brain so I had no thoughts of my own. And in a way, they’ve kind of done that to him, too. Only his story started out by watching his mother be murdered by someone who later became the symbol of heroism in America.”

I had heard bits and pieces about that.

“But… if he could have another life, maybe Daken can, too. I’m a nurse and an EMT. I’ve worked in one of the busiest ERs in the country and the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that everyone is worth saving. Or at least worth an attempt.”

He got up and held his hand out to me. “Come on, we have some more shopping to do.”

“For your friends?” I asked.

“No, they’re not expecting anything. Or demanding it to be left outside, either.”

I took his hand. He laced our fingers together and stuffed our hands in his pocket as he usually did these days. First we went to the bookstore. I bought a scrapbooking journal and some more papers. He bought a couple of books that he refused to let me see.

Then we went to the toy store.

I had no idea what he was going to get in the toy store, but he looked incredibly pleased with himself when he came out and held a bag up for me to see. “I’m making good on a promise. And maybe, if he’s here with a reason other than murder, it might put a little bandage on an old wound I caused.”

  
  


Jim spent a lot of time outside on Christmas Eve. He had wrapped up everything he bought and put them in a box with a cooler of beer and a bottle of bourbon. I think at that time he was really hoping to see Daken. Maybe to see what his condition was and to scope him out in preparation for the next fight, but maybe he just wanted to see him.

The next morning he woke before I did. I felt him get out of bed, pull on some clothes and then a minute later, I heard the front door open and close.

I got up and looked out the bedroom window. Jim was standing out there, barefoot without a jacket, hands stuffed in his pockets looking down at an empty box and empty cooler. There was a piece of paper in his hand that I knew hadn’t been in the box the night before. He picked up the box and threw it across the yard, then rustled his hair.

He had been hoping to see him.

I took my time showering, getting dressed, and brushing my teeth. There were always times with Jim when I had to go against my gut instinct, and let him just stew for a while. I didn’t know if he was angry, hurting, or just frustrated.

I was in the bathroom getting dressed when I heard him come into the room. He came into the bathroom and just looked at me. “That kid’s a brat.”

“Yup.” I nodded and pulled my housecoat over my sore shoulder.

“It’s my fault he’s this way.”

“Partly. But then it’s also the fault of all those people who used and abused him, too.”

“But I left him.” He looked away and shook his head.

“And I didn’t save Jennifer Sorenson.”

He looked up at me. “Who’s that?”

“A girl who was going to be a dancer. And starved herself to get thin enough to be one. But she came from a large family with a tall and stocky mother and a father who was about the same size as Peter.”

“That’s not your fault.” He told me.

“I’m not finished. She adored me. She looked up to me. She told me that if she wasn’t a dancer, she wanted to be a nurse like me. But she could barely move at that point. We had her on a feeding tube, and she was still talking about dancing. I told her that she needed to get healthy enough to walk, and that if she would start eating one snack a day and finish the whole thing, I could make it taste like anything in the world.”

I sat down on the edge of the bathtub. It had been so long since I had thought about her.

“What happened?” Jim moved closer to me. His expression had changed from disappointment to a concern for me.

“I was fired. She told her parents what I could do, and they were terrified that I was even allowed near her. So, they insisted that I either be fired, or they would move her to a different hospital. Well, the administration didn’t know what to do with a mutant on their staff, anyway, so they just fired me. And less than a week later she was dead. I didn’t visit her. Her parents called me at one point telling me she wouldn’t listen to them, she would only listen to me, and it was my fault that their precious little girl wasn’t getting any better.”

“But it wasn’t.” He leaned against the bathroom sink and crossed his arms.

“No, it wasn’t. But I still abandoned her to people with whom I knew she wouldn’t survive. There were probably a million things I might have done, but I made the best decision I could at the time.” I pushed myself up off the edge of the tub and went over to Jim and kissed him on his forehead. “Ask yourself if he, as a baby, would have even survived in the life you were living at that time, or if those people who turned you into a very dangerous weapon wouldn’t have done the same to him. Only as a baby, so he wouldn’t even have the sliver of a conscience that he has now.”

“Who says he has a conscience?”

“Your face does. And the fact that my mother and I are both still very much alive. And the fact that the box of things you got for him is empty.”

I was heading out of the bathroom when I was stopped by him wrapping his arms around my waist. “You’re the best, you know that?”

“You tell me that a lot.”

“It’s because you really are.”

I leaned back against him. “I think you’re the best, too.”

  
  


Mom made cinnamon sticky buns for breakfast. I thought the guys were going to break out in an all-out fight for the last one. Finally, Hank jumped up, snatched it out of Kurt’s tail, and handed it to my mother. “For the one who deserves it the most,” he told her, then bowed and went back to his chandelier.

“I can always make more,” mom told them.

“That’s not the point, mom.” I started our third pot of coffee. “Whoever gets the last one wins. And besides, if you make more, they’ll have to wait another 40 minutes.”

“Oh, the horror!” my mother went into the kitchen, cut the cinnamon roll into four pieces, and gave one quarter to each of the men. “I’ll make more tonight.”

We did a lot of cooking that day. And mom made her not even close to being famous egg nog. Basically, what she did was mix cream, eggs, sugar, spices and a whole lot of rum in a pot and cook it just until it’s barely warm. Jim thought it was just about the best thing in the world.

By the afternoon, we had all wound down and just sat around chatting in the living room.

Mom put on the Burl Ives Christmas Album. We had exchanged gifts in the morning just after breakfast, but she had one more tucked away.

“Here,” she said, handing Jim a small wrapped box. “It might not be my place to give this to you, but I think it should be yours, nevertheless.” I had been washing dishes, and came in the living room to see what she was talking about. Jim opened the box and pulled out an all-too-familiar ratty old journal.

“Mom, you didn’t!”

He looked up with a smug grin. “Your old journal?”

I shook my head. “No. Not really.”

Jim opened the book and started reading my stupid loopy handwriting complete with hearts dotting the “i”s, and little swirls and flowers in the corners of the pages.

“It’s my collection of zipper-man stories.” I sighed.

His face softened as he read through the first page. Then he turned the page and read two more. Paging through, he found that the entire book - all 110 pages - were filled with dreams and fantasies and stories about him.

I wanted to cry from embarrassment. I tossed the dish towel over my shoulder. “Sorry. It’s… I was just a stupid kid back then.” I went back into the kitchen and threw the towel down on the counter. It wasn’t so much the embarrassment of my mother finding that journal. I mean, I’d shared most of those stories with her at one point or another. But giving it to him? She was right, he ought to know just how obsessed I was with him back then.

I heard him set the box and wrapping aside and get up from the sofa. He still had the journal in his hand when he came into the kitchen.

He held the book up and opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he set the book on the counter and came over to me. Taking my face into his hands, he rubbed my cheeks with his thumbs and just smiled at me for a few moments. “You are so precious.”

“Yeah, back then I was really kind of stupid, too. I mean, those stories are mostly about you saving damsels in distress.”

“Really? Many different damsels?”

“No. Just one.” I sniffed. “Although I know you’ve saved plenty of damsels in your day.”

“That was all in the past, little lady. My day is right here, right now.” He picked up the book from where he had set it and held it up in the air. “I’m reading every word of this. But I have to say, I’m pretty sure the damsel I’ve got doesn’t need the zipper man to save her. She does a pretty good job saving the rest of the world on her own.”


	19. Fear, Itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is in the woods up there, and it's attacked again.

“Alright, Travis, you can drop the facade. What’s eating you?”

We were on our way back home from dropping mom off at the airport in Edmonton. She had noon flight on the 29th, so we had to leave Peace River at around five in the morning. Jim was sitting in the front next to his partner, and I was laying down on the backseat, trying to get a little rest.

“What was it that killed him?” Travis spoke quietly. I don’t know if he realized I wasn’t actually asleep. “Was it something like you? One of your friends?”

“I don’t know.” Jim’s voice was much lower than Travis’s.

“Did you bring it up here? Is that thing actually looking for you? The way I see it, you show up and suddenly, we’ve got creatures tearing people apart up in the woods. We have cannibals that turn into horrible beasts up on the ridge, and who knows what else is out there now.”

“It ain’t after me,” Jim told him firmly. “If it was after me, it woulda come for me when I was clearing out those wild dogs back in September. And I didn’t bring it up here. You oughta know that the mountains are pretty strange and dangerous places with or without any creatures up there.”

“But there are creatures out there now that most people wouldn’t even believe.”

“Yeah, there are.”

“And you’ve fought some of these before.”

Jim shifted in his seat and leaned against the door. “Jus’ because a man kills a bear doesn’t mean there are bears wherever he goes and that he’ll bring ‘em with him.”

There was a long silence. I thought it was the end of the conversation, but then after a while, Travis spoke again. “Help me find it. And when we go after it, we’re leaving the badges at home. I don’t want to write a report on what happens.”

“Fair enough.”

There was something strange about their conversation. Jim was on edge, and there was a kind of fear in Travis’s voice that I hadn’t heard before. Now, I hadn’t seen the body, but I knew that it was in pretty bad shape from what everyone had told me. However, this was the first time since we came to Peace River that I felt truly afraid.

Even Daken with his death threats didn’t scare me as much as the reaction of these two men to something they hadn’t even seen.

  
  


On the day my mother went home, Peter also left to go back to Chicago. He told Jim he would do some research on the mountain spirit, and suggested they consult the professor.

Jim told him to leave the professor out of it.

I was relieved to hear him say that. It isn’t that I had anything against the professor, but if the rest of his mutant school and friends got involved in this, they would be crawling all over my Peace River. And who knows what kinds of things might follow them up here.

Kurt and Hank decided to stay, though. While we were gone for the day, they had gone iinto town and rented the entire floor upstairs from the pharmacy to use as their office and living quarters. I think Kurt chose the place because it was only a short walk from Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church. He may not have had a parish of his own, but it always helped to have a family in faith. Even if you’re a mutant whose true appearance is similar to a demon.

The next morning, New Year’s Eve, Jim helped Kurt and Hank load their things into a rented truck, and then waved them away at the door. And I started the day with a horrible case of food poisoning. I watched the truck pull away from the bathroom window.

“You alright up there?” Jim called after I heard the door slam.

I wasn’t. I went back to dry-heaving. Exhausted, my stomach cramping, and completely out of energy, I braced myself on the toilet and slumped down on the floor.

“What did you eat?” Jim asked from the bathroom door. He came over to me, sat on the edge of the tub, and smoothed my hair back.

“Dunno. Maybe that turkey sandwich from the middle of the night?”

He turned on the bathtub, and waited a few moments for the water to get warm, then pulled a towel down from the rack, got it damp, and put it on the back of my neck. “I’m not lettin’ you drink tonight. Nothin’ but tea and water, that is.”

I nodded. It was a horrible way to spend our first new year together, but at that time, I thought to myself that it could have been a lot worse.

It did get worse.

After sleeping for a few hours, I felt Jim sit on the edge of the bed. He smiled at me, and then his phone rang. It was Jackson, Jim’s boss.

“Yeah?” Jim put his hand on my forehead. “I’m at home right now. What’s going on?”

“Tell him I say hi,” I snuggled down into the blanket.

“Where’s Pearson?” Jim asked. He pulled his hand off of my head and looked away. “How long has he been gone?” His voice shifted into a lower, more serious tone. “All right. No, I’ve got snow tires on the Dodge, so I  should be able to get out there okay. And you say the boys are both in the house? Right, then I’m bringing Lucy. Someone’s gotta stay with them.”

He looked at me with an apologetic smile as he put his phone down.

“You volunteered me for something,” I moaned, trying to pout.

“You’ve already got everything out of your stomach. And food poisoning isn’t catching.” Jim crawled into bed next to me. “Jack Sorenson’s gone missing. The boys called Father Daniel and asked if they could spend the night at the church, then Father Daniel called Jackson, and Jackson called me.”

“How long’s he been gone?”

“Since this morning. But he should have been back by noon. I have to go. And I’m not leaving you here alone.” He kissed me on the forehead. “No fever. And if something happened to Jack out in the woods past the farm, we might need your EMT bag.”

I sighed. “Get me a bottle of Milk of Magnesia, fill the thermos with some peppermint tea, and warm up the car. I’ll try to make myself look a little less dead.”

Jim pushed himself up and smiled. “You’re--”

“-- the best.” I finished. “Yeah, I know.”

  
  


Mr. Sorenson lived on a farm pretty much directly north of our house at the end of RR213. They had a 40-acre dairy farm, with another 30 acres of woods on what they liked to call “the rock” - a large foothill from the mountains. He was a widower with young teenage boys. Early that morning he and a couple of the farmhands went up into the woods to look for a couple of their cows that had gone missing overnight.

When we got there and pulled up to the house, I went inside, and Jim went around to the barn.

The boys had baked a couple of frozen pizzas and were playing video games in the living room. There were soda cans and cereal bowls on the coffee table and potato chip bags on the sofa. “So, you’ve got pizza, you’ve had cereal, and potato chips.” I stood by the television and put my hands in my pockets. “Pause the game. Let’s get this place cleaned up.”

“You’re the nurse.” One of them told me. He was the younger boy, Kyle, and his eyes looked as if he’d been crying recently.

His brother, Louis paused the game and looked up. “Are you the one that’s a mutant?”

I smiled. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

He looked at his brother, then over to me. “Nope. Not really. What do you do?”

I went over and sat with them on the sofa. My stomach was still feeling kind of queasy, and all the food and bowls were making it worse. “Let’s get this place cleaned up and I’ll show you.”

“Playin’ show and tell?” Jim asked as he came into the living room. He nodded at the boys. “Well, you two look like yer takin’ care of each other.” He came over and kissed me on the cheek. “We’re heading out now. It’s just about dark, so we’re not sure what’s going to happen. I’ll call when we find anything.”

“You a mutant, too?” Louis asked.

Jim smiled. “Yup.”

Louis just nodded. “Okay. Find my dad.”

“If anyone can find him, kid, it’s me.”

  
  


The boys and I made cookies, then lasagna. My stomach felt fine in the early evening. The boys told me about living on a dairy farm. Kyle was the natural farmer who told me all about the animals, the feed, the equipment they used every step of the way. Louis also told me about their wheat, alfalfa, and hay. But then he started going on and on about video games, flash animation, and smartphone apps.

Just as I was bringing the lasagna out of the oven, the back door burst open. “Lucy! Bring your bag. Kids, go upstairs, grab as many blankets and quilts as you can and bring them to the barn,” Jim shouted, then rushed back outside.

“I pushed the kids out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. “Go. Do as he says. The food will still be hot when we’re done, okay?” I grabbed my bag and rushed out to the barn. Jim and Pearson were both covered in blood. Mr. Sorenson, and one of their farm hands were laid out on a tarp on top of the straw. The other man was sitting on a stool near the dairy stalls, clutching at his shoulder.

“I put a tourniquet on his arm,” the farm hand told me. “Dunno if it’s gonna work okay, though.”

His name was Miguel. He went on about hot knowing what to do, and not really understanding what they had gone through in the first place.

Jack was in bad shape, but his man, Emilio was even worse. I looked at Jack’s arm. It wasn’t actually that bad, but there would be some nerve damage if he wasn’t treated quickly. “Get him wrapped up in blankets. It looks like it’s stopped bleeding, so let’s get that bandage off of his arm, and let the blood flow again. Pearson, call in to the clinic, and find out if they can send someone to come out here and pick him up.”

His phone was out and he was out the door before I could even move over to Emilio. Knowing that Jack wasn’t in any mortal danger, I got to work. They had been attacked by something that appeared to have taken a big bite out of his side. It almost looked like a shark attack - something I’d treated a few times when in California, but I hadn’t expected to see a shark bite victim in the mountains.

Still, at that point, my instincts kicked in and I didn’t give the “hows” and “whys” much thought. Codeine, antibiotics, saline, sutures, then dressing, antiseptic, and heat packs. By the time the kids came in with the blankets, their dad was awake and aware of his surroundings. Kyle was pretty emotional when he saw all the blood.

“Don’t worry, kids, this is all from the cows,” Jim told them. He took the blankets, then nodded to Jack. “Your dad’s gonna go into the clinic here, pretty soon. I want you boys to go with him, okay? Now get these blankets over here and wrap him up.”

I managed to stabilize Emilio, and sedate him for his ride into the hospital, but his pulse was still very weak, and he hadn’t regained consciousness yet. His extremities were pretty badly frostbitten, too.

“They’re sending an ambulance for Jack, and a helicopter for Emilio.” Pearson told me as he came back into the barn.

“He doesn’t speak much English,” Miguel said. “Will it be alright if I go with him?”

Jim nodded. “Go with him. If they have a problem with it, tell ‘em you two are family. And if they still won’t, I’ll go and talk with them.”

Kyle was crying, but Louis kept a level head and kept talking to his dad about how he could take care of things while his dad was recovering.

As I was cleaning Emilio’s face, I could hear the helicopter outside. Only a couple minutes later, the paramedics came in, moved the men onto stretchers, and took Emilio away. Considering the fact that it was New Year’s Eve, and they didn’t have any Spanish translators, they let Miguel go with him without an argument.

When the ambulance arrived, the EMT’s reaction to me wasn’t quite as hospitable. “Do you want me to go with him?” I asked the man after he checked Jack’s vitals. “I work at the clinic and--”

“I know who you are.” The man didn’t look up. He motioned to his partner. “We don’t need your help. And quite frankly we don’t want your help. At this point, I’m just praying that you didn’t contaminate him.”

Jim opened his mouth and took a step forward.

“And I’m not afraid of you, either.” I looked at his nametag. Dawson. “Because I’m here to do a job. And we can do just fine here without you.” They brought Jack out of the barn and the boys followed them.

Pearson went with Jack and the boys when the ambulance arrived which left Jim and I in the barn. I fell back into the straw and started shivering, then crying.

“You okay?” He crouched down next to me and pulled me over into a hug. “Shhh. It’s alright.”

He had always been somewhat uncomfortable with this kind of comforting, and I had always been embarrassed when I cried, but thinking about Emilio, I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t think he’s going to make it,” I told Jim.

“You’re worried about Emilio?”

“Yeah. Not enough blood, and hypothermia, plus I’m afraid he might die of septic shock before they even get there, even with the antibiotics I gave him.”

“Jesus, I thought you were upset about what that jerk said to you.” Jim sighed, then lifted me up to stand. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

I gathered myself together, wiped my face with the corner of a blanket, and then shook my head. “I’ve got a lasagna in the kitchen. We should put that outside to freeze. And then I want to get a drink.” I looked up at Jim. “At Wong’s River Bar. Call Kurt and Hank and see if they want to meet us there.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

He followed me inside where I covered the lasagna with foil and put the cookies in a plastic bag. “There’s something I want to do, and I want to do it in a room with as many people around me as possible.”

“You’re going for some kind of grand gesture? If you’re thinking about telling the whole town about what’s up there in the woods, I’m telling you right now, it would be a stupendously bad idea.” Jim’s face was all wrinkled with concern.

“I’m not going to tell them there’s something out there. I wouldn’t know what to say if they asked me what it was. And you have more to worry about word getting around when Miguel comes back alone, and tells the town about his buddy. Or when the nurses start talking about what happened to Jack.” On our way outside, I put the lasagna on the porch table. “The kids taught me a lesson today, and I want to go out and celebrate.”

He came up behind me and took my hand. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve. It’s just after ten. And I want to kiss in the new year with someone for the first time in my life. I also want a lot of beer and some whiskey and I want to get smashing drunk and then pass out so that you have to carry me home.”

He smiled and unlocked the passenger door. “Get in. We’ll call Kurt. He’ll make Hank go.”


	20. Let the Spirits Flow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drinking your troubles away isn't great when you happen to choose the wrong place at the wrong time at the end of a very wrong day.

The most important points of that night: I didn’t get drunk. I found out that the EMT, the Killians, and the Andersens were in the minority, and most of the town was pretty happy Jim and I had moved there. Also, Jim can dance. He actually dances really really well. Which not only surprised me, but gave me another excuse to fall in love again.

So, about the first point, it’s not like I wasn’t trying to get drunk. And this tied into the second point. The fates seemed to be working against me when it came to my enthusiastic endeavor toward a drunken stupor.

I hadn’t been back to work since the Christmas party, and that revelation that I had a mutant gene. So, I hadn’t realized how people would react to me again. Sure, I had gone out shopping, but we were in a huge crowd at the time, and everyone was too busy with their own shopping to pay attention to me.

However, by New Year’s Eve, word had enough time to get around, so when I stepped into this social event, with Jim by my side, things immediately shifted sideways.

We went home to shower and change first, and then went straight to the bar. The parking lot was completely full, and we ended up parking halfway down the road, closer to the gas station. As we walked across the icy sidewalks with our hands in Jim’s pocket, I could almost feel the storm brewing in the air. It came as soon as we walked into Hong’s.

“Look who’s here.” A voice came from the bar.

I didn’t recognize the voice, nor did I care to. Instead, I went right up to the bar, ordered two shots of tequila and two beers, and then turned to Jim. “What are you having?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Half of what you’re having. I’m not letting you--”

Before he could finish his sentence, I had downed the two tequila shots. He stopped my arm when I went for the beer. “Lucy.”

“You tryin’ to drink your mutant genes away?” The same voice asked, followed by his own laughter. Nobody else in the bar wanted to take sides, apparently, and they all got very interested in their drinks, the bowls of pretzels, or whatever the hell was under their fingernails.

I looked over to the source of the annoyance and saw Mr. Killian standing there with his wife by his side. The same woman who had told everyone at the clinic party that I was a mutant.

“No, I’m pretty proud of my mutant genes. I’m actually trying to recover from another tough day of working off the clock saving the citizens of this town.” I slammed down my shot glass. “It seems to be a habit of mine now - you know, saving people’s lives instead of just hanging around in bars and at parties making other people miserable.”

Jim put his hand on my waist. “Let me know if you need back-up, love,” he whispered in my ear.

“No, I think I’ll be just fine. I have two more beers to finish.” I picked up the beer and raised in the direction of the Killians. “Here’s to mutants who spend their entire lives helping other people, God love us!”

Jim kissed my cheek. “Let’s go over to a table.”

“No, little man, let your lady talk to me. I want to know what gives either of you freaks of nature the right to come up here and start contaminating our town. We didn’t ask you up here. We didn’t invite you. Sure, maybe the government sympathizes with your kind, but they didn’t ask us.” He used that same word the EMT used - contaminating.

Kurt and Hank arrived in the middle of the man’s rant, and wisely slipped aside into a corner.

I scowled. “We were invited up here. In fact, if we hadn’t been invited up here, the Sorenson boys would probably be orphans right now.”

Mr. Killian looked shocked and angry. “What was that?”

I took my beer and went right up to him. “Jack, Emilio, and Miguel were all injured and lost up on the rock today. I’m drinking this,” I held my beer in his face, “to try to get the image out of my head of what Emilio looked like even after I’d done everything I could to save him. Oh, Jack’s going to be alright, but if Jim, my darling husband the mutant, hadn’t found them, and I hadn’t been there to help him, he would probably be dead up in the woods, and the boys would have been asleep in the living room surrounded by half-eaten pizza and potato chip bags. While their dad froze to death.”

Mr. Killian looked irate. “What the hell?”

“Don’t even get me started, mister. ‘Cause I’ve had just about enough of your kind of bullshit my whole life. I’m a nurse. I was a paramedic, and an EMT before that. I’ve worked in some of the busiest Emergency Rooms in this country and in the United States, and I can tell you that there are more horrible, murderous, dangerous, and vile regular people out there than there are mutants.”

I drank half of my beer, then went back to my place at the bar. Jim looked like he was about to burst out laughing. He cracked his knuckles. “I don’t know you from Adam, mister, but don’t try to argue with my wife. Just like her mother, she’s always right.”

He ordered a pitcher of the strongest beer they had - a spiced Winter Ale that was nearly 10% alcohol, and we brought it over to the table where Kurt and Hank were sitting.

“She’s in a mood,” Jim told them as he set the pitcher on the table.

“I can see that.” Hank lifted the pitcher, whistled, and motioned for the bartender to send over two more, and then two more glasses. He didn’t look himself when he was in his human skin. Neither did Kurt, for that matter. But then, it was unlikely this town would have just accepted them as their little “blue man group.”

I put my beer on the table, but before I could sit down, Jim took my hand. “Let’s dance,” he said. He brought me over to an empty corner of the bar. There really wasn’t enough room to dance with all of the people crowded in that place. But Jambalaya was playing on the speakers, and Jim seemed determined.

“I can talk to you easier like this.” How he managed to lead me through a two-step in a space roughly the size of a postage stamp, I have no idea. I just chalked it up to another one of his mutant abilities.

“We could talk just as easily outside, too. Or at home, or in the diner.”

“Aah, but here, I can show you off to everyone in town.” He told me. “Besides, I’m itching right now. Something’s rotten in here, and I’m just waiting for it to come out and rear its ugly head.

“More rotten than Mr. Killian and wife?”

“Mmm.” He took me for another turn, then the song ended. “I think there’s something else coming.”

“What? Something like the windigos, or whatever it is that attacked Mr. Sorenson?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. It just feels like things are gonna get real bad, real fast. I mean, look at Hank and Kurt. They’re on edge, too. They look like a couple of cats who are all coiled up and ready to pounce.”

I glanced over at the table. He was right. They were both leaning forward and sitting on the edge of their chairs. “So, what do you think we should do?”

Jim was just staring into my eyes.

“Ten minutes to midnight! Half price whiskey until the new year!” the bartender announced.

He pulled me close and hugged me tightly. “We should order two whiskeys. Then I’m going to take you over by the front window so I can see what’s going on outside. And you’re going to sit in my lap. And the moment something triggers, you duck in behind that hostess stand.”

I turned my head and whispered into his ear. “You’re that sure something’s going to happen?”

“I’m more than sure. I’ve felt this kind of electricity in the air so many times. There was a time in my life I used to practically live in dive bars. And if there’s one thing I can feel coming, it’s a full-on barroom brawl.” He moved back and nodded his head toward the corner. “Look, almost all the women have left already. These men have sent them home before the strike of midnight. Doesn’t seem right, does it?”

My heart was hammering in my chest. Why this bar? Of all the places? And why on this day that started out so shitty and just got worse and worse? “Would it be better if I left?”

“Nope. At least in here, the threat is contained, and we have three of the best fighters in town here to protect you.” As Jim turned to lead me to our corner, Travis and Jackson arrived. “Make that five.”

In fact, from the moment Travis and Jackson walked into the room, things got really quiet. I could actually hear the lyrics of the song that was playing, and the sound of the video games in the corner.

“Oh, don’t worry about us. Keep on with your partying. We’re just here for a couple of beers to ring in the new year,” Travis announced to the room.

They pulled a table up to the one where Hank and Kurt were sitting and then Jackson ordered another pitcher of beer and two more glasses.

Instead of going near the front window, Jim led me back to the table. “Fancy seeing you two here. I thought you were out visiting yer kinfolk.” Jim held his hand out for Travis to shake.

“Well, I was, then I came back. I heard about Jack and went to go visit him in the clinic. Heard you did a good job up there.” He looked over to me. “Both of you.”

I shrugged. “You know how it is, whether you’re on or off the job, the training kicks in, and you’re acting on instinct.”

“I know exactly what that’s like,” Jackson announced loud enough for everyone to hear. He took off his Stetson hat and threw it down on the table. “Don’ matter whether yer wearing the badge or not, shit goes down, pardon my French, ma’am, I’m ready and willing to step in and intercede in the name of the law.”

“Situation diffused?” I leaned over and whispered in Jim’s ear.

“Not even close. What’s comin’ ain’t here yet.”

Almost on cue, the countdown began. The bartender turned up the volume on all the televisions, and turned off the music. Hank pushed his chair back, and Kurt took off his coat and changed his position so he was crouching on his own chair, one hand on the table.

It all happened just when Midnight chimed. And when I say “all happened,” I’m not really sure what “all” was. Jim pulled me up to him and kissed me really hard turning so his own back was to the window, and I was practically pushed up against Hank. And then just as he was kissing me, something hit him in the back of the head. He grabbed me, pushed me down and under the hostess stand, and then ordered Kurt to guard me.

I could only catch a glimpse of him, and what I saw made me giggle. There Jim was, walking directly up to Killian, with an arrow sticking out of the back of his head. “Oh, damn. Someone’s made him mad,” I said quietly to Kurt.

“Nope. He’s not mad yet. He’s still in full control. Hank’s here to make sure he doesn’t get mad, and I’m here to get you to safety if he does.” He picked up his leather jacket and handed it to me. “Put this on the other side of you. It won’t be able to block a bullet, but if they’re bow-hunting, then it’s at least one more layer. And just hold onto my tail. I may need to get you out of here in a hurry.” Kurt’s tail snaked around inside the hostess stand, and I did exactly as I was told.

“Damn, that hurt,” I hear Jim announce. “Still, not nearly as bad as being run through by swords, or having an entire clip emptied into me. And yeah, I think the acid was more painful, too.” I heard the arrow fall on the floor. “But that wasn’t very nice. So, tell me who’s outside helping you out, and I promise to take it easy on all of you.”

“Jim, just remember that we’re all off the clock right now,” Jackson announced. The chief took another drink of his beer. “So, whatever you do, I can’t take any sort of administrative action for it unless there are witnesses.”

“Roger that, Sir. No witnesses.”

There was a sound of a truck revving outside, and then I heard a crash of glass and wood. But before I could register what was going on, I found myself slipping through what felt like a cold, dark, spongy mass, and falling out inside a sparsely-decorated apartment.

“Well, that didn’t go very well,” Kurt told me. He helped me stand. “Welcome to my new home.” He nodded his head in the direction of the window. “Let’s see what’s happening down there.”

I went over to the window and looked out. There was an amazing view of the town, and right in the middle was Wong’s. With a crowd of men holding guns and bows standing outside, and a Ford F350 dually crashed right in the front of the building.

“Damn,” I cursed. “Sorry, Kurt.”

“That’s alright. It does look pretty bad.”

“No, that’s not it. I just realized I left my EMT bag in the car, and we’re parked two blocks down on the other side.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, but I guarantee they will be when Jim’s finished with ‘em.”


	21. Coming Clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy gets a lesson in what it's like to be the one Jim has sworn to protect. And then Jim comes clean with one of his secrets.

The advantage of having a virtually indestructible husband who also may be the best fighter in the country: I never have to worry about his safety.

The disadvantage of having a virtually indestructible husband who also may be the best fighter in the country: I always have to worry about anyone who crosses him.

We watched for a minute or two from that window, as men rushed in, and a short time later, the same men were thrown out. “I should really go and help them,” Kurt finally said.

I turned to him. “Hey, that thing you did to get me out of there and over here. Going through that spongy stuff. Can you do it again?”

“I… I can. Why?” He looked suspicious, and I was pretty sure his suspicions were correct.

“I want my bag. Can you take me to the car? It’s parked up there by the gas station.” I pointed in the direction of where we parked, and you could just barely make out a brown and tan car around the corner.

“If I took you there, Logan would be extremely angry with me. I won’t say he’d kill me ‘cause that is sometimes an actual possibility, but in this case, I’m pretty sure he’d--”

“It’s either you take me there your “safe” way, or I walk downstairs, down the street, right past this huge fight that is pretty much over me. Which do you think he would prefer?”

Kurt narrowed his eyes and groaned. “You have to promise not to get involved in this fight, okay? Get your bag, get in that car, and drive either home or to the clinic.”

“I’m not promising that.” I shrugged and turned toward the door.

Kurt took my hand and a moment later, I felt like I fell through the floor again, into that cold sponginess. And suddenly, I was in a cold, icy place right by to the car with Kurt standing next to me.

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to help them. You just… well, don’t get hurt. Don’t get involved if you can help it.”

“I’m a healer first, Kurt.”

Kurt put his hands on my shoulders. “Well, tonight, can you be a wife first, and accept that if something happened to you, it would destroy him? And I am being quite serious when I say it would probably destroy half of this town, as well.”

“He gets that angry?”

“When he goes into a blind rage? Yes. And I’m 100% positive that he would do that if you went in there, and someone put a knife through you. Or an arrow, or even knocked you unconscious so that he didn’t know you weren’t dead.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “Okay, then I’ll…”

“You’ll take those keys in your hand and drive to the clinic, or even better, drive home. Things will be alright here. You’re not the only healer in this town, and you might make things worse if you go back. Just this once, go home, okay?”

I wasn’t sure what else to do. I took my bag out of the trunk of the car, then went to watch as Kurt ran down toward the bar. The police had already arrived, and it looked as if things were starting to wind down. I had really wanted to run down there and help, or at least be there to pick up Jim and bring him home.

But instead, I got into the car and started driving. I had been fighting the feeling of being useless my whole life. I’d been struggling to find some way to make up for being a mutant, and for being a burden to my family, and for causing fear in people, even though it wasn’t my fault. Becoming a nurse was part of me compensating for all of my other shortcomings.

But here I was, in a situation where they needed my nursing and paramedic skills, but they couldn’t use me because I was, yet again, a liability because of this one gene.

I stopped the car at the turnaround for RR213 and just sat there for a while, thinking. Kurt was right about my safety being a concern for Jim. And part of me was also convinced that Jim would do some terrible things if something ever did happen to me. But as I turned the car around and drove back into town, I was also sure of one other thing. I had to do what I was meant to do. And that was helping people.

I pulled up to the bar and parked behind one of the police cars. Johnson and Morris were helping a couple of men into the back of another squad car. “Where do you need me?” I asked them, slinging my bag over my shoulder.

“Lucy! You’re here. Get in there and take Jim home. Don’t do a damn thing until you get him home, in the shower, and calmed the heck down!” Levi shouted at me from just inside the bar.

Jackson ushered another man out of the bar. He had a composite bow in his hand. “Go get ‘im, Lucy. I don’t know how long it takes someone like him to recover, but he’s gonna need some down time.”

I went inside and saw what looked like the aftermath of a bomb blast. Hank was helping a couple of men sit upright in the corner. Kurt was talking to the bartender, trying to calm him down.

Jim was slumped on the floor near one of the video games. I went up to him and kicked his boot with my shoe. “Come on, handsome, let’s get you home.”

“Don’t call me that,” he groaned as he pushed himself up. It looked as if his arm was all but detached at the socket.

“Handsome?” I shrugged. “Okay, I’ll think of another pet name for you.” I wrapped my arm around his waist and helped him over to the door. “But first I’m driving you home. And then after that, you’re gonna tell me how many teeth Killian has left, and then we’re going to see if you’ve recovered enough to take me to bed.”

“What? You can’t tell me you’re turned on by all of this?”

“Nope. Not this, just you and your damn chivalry defending my honor, protecting me, taking on the world while keeping me safe. That kind of thing.”

He almost smiled through gritted teeth. “Yeah, I’m gettin’ pretty good at it.”

From the look of him, I doubted he would be up for anything but a shower and bed that night. His head was cut all over and there were still shards of glass sticking out of his scalp and neck. He had been stabbed in the side at one point - I could see by the cut and bloodstain on his shirt. And he was limping slightly.

Still, I was there to encourage him. “And then after we’ve got rid of all our excess energy, you’re gonna come clean with me.”

“What about?”

“About why you came up here, and what your plans for me actually are.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that.” I helped him into the passenger seat, then went around to the driver’s side and got in. “And if you don’t want to tell me, then I’ll tell you, and you can just tell me when I’m wrong.”

I pulled away from the bar and headed out on our usual way home. Jim turned his neck, and brought up his limp arm to pop it back into the socket. “No, I think we can talk.”

“I think we could have talked ages ago.”

“Probably.”

  
  


It was nearly two by the time we got home, and I was completely exhausted from the entire day. I showered, fell into bed, and I didn’t even feel like moving. I was actually kind of grateful when he threw my nightshirt at me, and told me I was going right to sleep.

I was almost asleep when he sat down on the bed next to me. “I lied,” he told me. “You’re not goin’ to sleep yet. I’ve got something I need you to sign, and I kinda want to do it right now.”

“Mmm? What’s that?”

He put a file on the bed next to me, and I pushed myself up. The lamp on the bedside table was already on. I picked up the file and looked inside. As I leafed through the papers, I felt the heat of blood rushing into my head.

“The date on these… It’s from last summer.”

“Yup. I should have told you earlier.”

“It’s from the week before I moved.”

“I had them drawn up the day you called. Before I went out there to help you.”

“And what if I had said no?”

Jim kissed my shoulder. “That hadn’t actually occurred to me.”

I flipped through all of the documents. “My signature is missing.”

“Yeah. The whole thing is kind of… unofficially official. I mean, I know a guy who filed it and registered it and everything, but he still needs copies of the paperwork to file. I just wanted to make sure it was okay with you. You can think about it if you like. I mean, take all the time you need.”

“But according to the state of California, we’ve been married for 8 months.”

“Yup. You can’t just come up here and take a government job, tell them you have a wife when you’re filling out pension paperwork and insurance forms, and have them take your word for it.” He got up and leaned against the dresser. “But, like I said, take your time and think about it. Make sure this is something you really want to do.”

I read through all of the papers again, then got up and went over to my purse hanging on a hook by the bedroom door. “Call Kurt and Hank and see if they can come over tomorrow morning. Or, this morning. Or noon. Or whenever.” I took out a pen and started signing the forms. “We need witnesses.” I pointed at Jim with my pen. “And I want a wedding. We can call it a renewal of vows or a second honeymoon or whatever you like, but I want a real wedding that’s bigger and nicer and has better food than my brother’s!”

Jim crossed the room and stood, looking down at the papers on the table. “Let’s see if we can do better than that. Shall we just fly your whole family out here for it?”

I pushed the pen and papers onto his chest, and he caught them. “Sounds great. Now let’s get to bed. Today has been about 90% shit, and I need to sleep to get rid of all the suckiness.” I yawned and practically fell into the bed.

“90%? What was the other 10%?”

I somehow wormed my way under the covers. “Finding out I’ve been married to you all along, and dancing with you.”

“What about your midnight kiss?” He asked in a jovial tone as he climbed into bed.

That was somewhat shitted on when you got the arrow in the head. It’s alright though,” I told him as I moved closer and rested my head on his arm. “You can think of a way to make it up to me tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can think of a way.” He kissed the top of my head, then turned off the lamp.

We lay there for a few minutes, me trying to fall asleep and him pretending to be asleep, while questions kept running around in my head. Specifically one question that I needed answered before I could actually rest.

“Did anyone get killed tonight?”

He opened one eye and looked down at me. Illuminated only by the outside light and the moon, I wasn’t sure if his expression was curiosity or amusement. But he certainly wasn’t angry. “I kept my claws in, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s kind of what I’m asking.”

“No, nobody was killed in the fight. And as far as this town is concerned, my mutant ability is that I can take an arrow to the head, and when I pull it out, the hole closes up within a minute or two.” He brought his hand up and placed it on his head. “Hank was there to make sure I didn’t go too far, and since I knew you were safe, the fight was more entertainment than necessity.”

“Thanks.”

“I left that man behind when I came up here with you, Lucy. I don’t want that life anymore, and all of my friends and everyone at that school and at the organizations I used to work with know that I ain’t going back to it.”

Although his track record wasn’t great with these kinds of promises, and I knew that those “organizations” he spoke of rarely took “no” for an answer, I believed him this time. I knew he had been basically a hired killer in the past. And he’d been kidnapped, brain-wiped, brainwashed, re-programmed, and who knows what else.

“If you did have to do it, though, I’d understand. I mean, if you really, really had no other choice. Like whatever it is in the woods that’s attacking people and animals. That thing, if you have to go back to what you used to do, then just do it. And don’t worry about what I think ‘cause I’ll always be proud of you.”

He froze for a moment, then pulled my head closer and kissed it. “I love you, Lucy. You really are the best.”

“Yeah, tell me that again tomorrow when you get up at eight to make me pancakes and bacon.” I paused for a moment, realizing that there was something in that moment that hadn’t been there before. “I love you, too.”


	22. A Second Enounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another mutant comes to town to help our heroes find out what's lurking in the woods. But Lucy should be more concerned with what's lurking in the hardware store.

Kurt and Hank came over the next day and signed all the papers as witnesses. They also ate the leftover pancakes from breakfast. Jim wasn’t entirely sure what a normal “serving” was, so he used the entire box of mix and made enough for a small army. Or at least a squadron.

There was, of course, no leftover bacon. And there never would be with Jim around.

It being a holiday, most of the stores were closed, and only a few restaurants were open for business. It was also incredibly cold, and none of us wanted to go out in temperatures that were well below zero.

So, the four of us just stayed in.

“Since we’re all here, I want to see what you two think of what I came across yesterday.” Jim was sitting on the sofa with me half in his lap.

“You mean Emilio?” I asked.

Jim nodded. “Looks like a shark attack, only he was up in the woods. Whatever it was that attacked him, neither of the other men saw it. And they were attacked by it, too. So, either it’s invisible, or…”

“Or it’s really fast,” Hank finished.

“Or it might be something else.” Kurt was perched on the mantle as usual, but flipped himself down into the chair by the fire to join the conversation. “What if it slips between dimensions or realities? It could be doing that.”

“It might be composed of something that hides between subatomic particles for that matter,” Hank suggested.

“See, all I had to do was pose a question, and these two will come up with the answer. You’ve got your Google where you type something in and get all kinds of ideas? I’ve got friends with really smart and creative brains,” he whispered in my ear.

I smiled. “Okay, but when we say sharkbite, we’re talking about the formation of the toothmarks. This thing has broad thin teeth in rows like a shark. And when it did the biting, it seemed to just bite, and then let go. As if human blood wasn’t tasty to it.”

The others looked at me. “So, it attacked and then let go?”

“But the cows that had gone missing had been eaten down to the bone. And some of the bone was munched down, as well, in the case of one of them,” Jim added.

“Do you have some paper and a pencil I can use?” Hank asked. “I think we need to get all the facts down and laid out in front of us before I make the call.”

“Make what call?” Jim lifted me up to sit on that arm of the sofa and leaned over.

“I know you want to keep the professor out of it, but there’s someone else we can call, you know. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one person in this world who has the research capabilities to handle this kind of problem, and...”

“And it might be nice for Lucy to have another woman to talk to?” Kurt finished. He smiled.

Hank shrugged.

“Sage,” Jim said.

“Well, she could be a big help. And as far as I know, she’s been itching to get into the wild again. She might even know something about the same legends from the Afghan mountains.” Hank offered.

“I thought she wasn’t working anymore. Didn’t she go into exile or something?” Jim asked.

“You mean, like you did when you came to live up here?” Hank pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled at Jim. “She may not be working right now, but I know where she is, and I’m fairly sure she would be willing, and probably even eager to help us.”

I leaned over to Jim. “Who’s Sage?”

  
  


Perfect. Beautiful, smart, and clever. She wore a kind of mask that only emphasized her eyes and high cheekbones. And with those big lips, shapely figure, and long hair, I just looked like a hairball a cat coughed up standing next to her. Still, I’ve never held it against anyone else for their good looks. We aren’t all born with that kind of beauty. Some of us are frumpy and short and although we’re not hideous, we don’t have anything that people would consider to be actually attractive.

So, when I finally met her, I behaved in pretty much the same way I did when meeting most of the young women in California and Atlanta. I took a moment to sigh, smile, and then tried not to cry from the feelings of inadequacy.

“It’s a pleasure meeting you,” I told her, extending my hand. We were in Hank’s lab that he’d set up in one of the rooms he and Kurt had rented downtown. “I haven’t heard much about you other than you’re really smart and you can probably help us figure out what’s up in the mountains.”

She just looked at me funny for a moment, then turned to Jim. “This is Lucy?” she asked.

I put my hand down.

Jim nodded. “Yup.”

“And you married her?”

He looked up at the ceiling and sort of nodded his head, as if he was thinking if “married” was the right word for what he’d done. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

She looked back over to me. “What do you do?”

I clasped my hands behind my back and sighed. “I’m a nurse. And sometimes up here something of a paramedic or EMT, too. With what’s been going on lately, we’ve needed--”

“No, I mean, your mutant power. You are a mutant, aren’t you?” She crossed her arms and looked at me as if she was looking for a jigsaw puzzle piece.

“I can change how food tastes.”

She nodded. “I see. That’s all?”

“No, that’s not all. But that’s the main thing.” I shrugged, then turned to Jim and Hank, who were talking with each other. “I’m gonna go for a walk. Maybe down to the hardware store. Do you need anything?” Everyone looked at me weird, as if I’d just told them I was going to the moon. “Whatever. Just send me a text if you need anything.”

I was out the door and halfway down the stairs when Jim caught up with me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just need to get some pliers and wire so I can fix the clasp on my bag. And since there’s nothing I can contribute to the conversation up there right now, I figured I’d just go now since you don’t need me.”

“You’re upset.” He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. “What’s upsetting you?”

I sighed. “Nothing. At least, nothing important. I’ll tell you about it later when we get home, okay?” I forced a smile, then continued down the stairs and outside. Thankfully, Jim didn’t follow me. I really did need some time alone to think.

I walked down the road, past Hong’s, which had a huge plastic tarp over the front and a sign that read “open during construction.” Turning the corner, I crossed the river, and went down to the hardware store. It was cold outside, and I was in too much of a hurry to pay much attention to my surroundings, so I really didn’t notice the man in the leather jacket as he followed me into the store, down the main aisle, and into the back corner where the wire was stored.

Suddenly, though, I felt an arm come around my waist and a cold, sharp edge on my collar. “Fancy meeting you here, mom.”

My first instinct was panic, and then a kind of curiosity at the tone of his voice. “Daken? You don’t sound nearly as angry and psychotic today.”

The edge of his blade tilted, and he cut the collar of my coat. “Really? You think so?”

“I didn’t say your actions weren’t as psychotic. There’s CCTV, you know?”

“Not in this corner,” he breathed into my ear. “What did you put in that drink?”

It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. I had all but forgotten about what I did with my coffee during our previous encounter. And since the truth was strange enough, I figured I’d just tell him.

“I put some of my own saliva in it. And there may have been a few blood cells from a hangnail.”

He pulled me closer, and the knife slid up, popping off the top button of my shirt. “I mean, what did it do? What kind of power do you really have?”

“I can make things taste different, that’s all. I can make things smell different, too. But I really don’t think you want me to turn your body odor into skunk spray right now, do you?” He relaxed his grip on me just a little.

“So, whatever it was I tasted…”

“Was supposed to be butterscotch milkshake. Saliva and blood enhance the flavor. If it’s just my sweat, the effect isn’t very potent.” It was the best explanation I had at the time without going into a full explanation of what my body fluids could do.

He released me and took a step back. I heard that same kind of “snikt” sound that Jim’s claws made, only with Daken’s it wasn’t quite as melodic.

“I liked the presents you picked out for me, little lady,” he told me. He turned to look at some speaker wire, just as an old man came down the aisle.

“I didn’t pick them out, your father did. And don’t call me ‘little lady’, that’s what your dad calls me.” I picked out some 22-gauge wire and went over to look at the wire cutters.

“He did not. He hasn’t bought me a damn thing in his whole life.”

“He absolutely did. And you can’t tell me you weren’t watching as he stood out there in the cold waiting for you to show up.”

The old man found what he was looking for, nodded to me and then turned to go back to the register.

Daken came close again and grabbed my elbow. “He was waiting out there to attack me.”

“He would have done nothing of the kind. Do you honestly believe he would have started a fight with you on Christmas Eve when my mother and I were just inside the house? I can’t even imagine what might have happened had things escalated. And if he went into one of his rages? Like if you cut me or something? I may not know much about you, Daken, but I know you’re not stupid.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He was giving me an inch, so I took it. “What do you want to share? Anything? Bad memories? Good memories?”

“It’s all bad. The only good memories were when I had a good job working for--”

“Don’t even give me that,” I was irate. I had heard enough about Daken to know he was dangerous. I knew what he had done while working for Osborn, I knew what had happened to his mother, and how he exacted revenge on just about everyone else for being neglected and orphaned as a boy. “Don’t think for a moment that you’re unique in your pain. I’ve told you before, I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of what you’ve done, or who you are, or where you’ve been, or what you’ve seen. I can guarantee I’ve seen worse.”

“Have you had your mother killed before you were even born?” He challenged me.

God help me, I rose to the challenge. “No, but I did see my father get torn to pieces - practically shredded before my eyes.” Daken just stood there. “And I’ve seen children come into my ER with multiple bullet wounds who had also seen their parents gunned down in front of them. And I’ve seen mothers carrying in the limp bodies of their dead and dying children. And I’ve seen rape victims who come in begging the doctors to just kill them because they don’t want to raise the children of their rapist with a scarred and disfigured face from the wounds inflicted on them.”

Daken smiled at me.

“I don’t go into a rage. I don’t have the convenience of forgetting everything that happened. I don’t have 100 years of memories to drown the bad ones in. I’ve got 34 years. That’s it. And I’ve seen more than one lifetime’s worth of horrors. So if you really want to know what my life is like, go down and work in the rape crisis unit at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Or go down to Drew Medical Center and sit in the ER for a while to see what trickles in.”

“You don’t know anything,” he spat at me.

“I know a lot. And I know that whatever you felt after that sip of coffee, will be multiplied exponentially if you get my blood on you. That wasn’t even a full drop of my blood, kidd-o. Just imagine what kind of memories will be triggered in you if you cut me and get splashed with it.” I grabbed a blister pack with a wire cutter and plier set, then went up to the counter, leaving him there in the corner.

He didn’t follow me. I didn’t expect him to.

By the time I got back to Kurt and Hank’s apartment, Jim was waiting for me. “That took too long,” he told me.

“Yeah, well, I ran into someone I knew and we argued a bit.” It wasn’t a lie.

“You okay?”

I nodded. I went to go inside, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled me in for a hug. “You’re not okay. And you smell like Daken. Now, I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not going to make you tell me. I’ll tell you right now, though, that I’m absolutely horrified thinking of what he could have done to you. But whatever it is you’re doing to him? It’s got him thinking again.”

“How do you know that?”

“He hasn’t hurt you.” Jim took a step back. He grabbed my hand and stuffed it into his pocket as we walked up the stairs.“No, he hasn’t. He’s threatened, but it just sounded like one of those little maltese puppies barking at a doberman.”

Jim laughed. “Don’t tell him that. And also, you’re not going anywhere without me again.”

“From the way he’s been acting, I think he’s looking for something. I doubt he’ll do anything before he finds what he’s looking for.”

“Still,I’m not taking any chances.

We got to the top of the stairs, and Jim opened the door. “I start work next week.”

“Damn.”

 


	23. A Shift in the Winds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A huge storm is coming. It's the worst time for Hank and Sage to be stuck in the woods, but when the search party goes out to find them, there's more than just snow in the storm.

Although going back to work should have been the most natural thing in the world for me, I felt as if I was starting a totally new job for the first time. It really didn’t matter what Dr. Green had told everyone, a lot of people were still nervous around me. And I’m sure everybody had heard about what happened at Wong’s on New Year’s Eve. Not that any of it was my fault in the least, but I learned long ago that just because there shouldn’t be any blame, didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any assigned.

They put me on the night shift with Jake.

Which was fine. I mean, I loved working with Jake, and it was an excuse for us to get to know each other better. Night shifts were never as busy as the day shifts, and for the most part, our patients were those who worked the third shift at the refinery and actual emergencies.

“They’ve tucked me away where they feel I can do no harm,” I told Jim as I tossed my purse on the sofa. “Not exactly what I had signed up for, but not the worst situation in the world.”

Being someone like me, a normal person who happened to have this funky thing they did as a result of one odd gene, I’d been used to this kind of treatment for decades. But Jim had a totally different set of past experiences, and I could see that he was not impressed with my new change in schedule.

“It’s not right,” he grumbled as he hung the keys up on the hook by the front door.

“A lot of things in life aren’t right. But think of it this way, Dr. Green said there’s no rule against you coming and visiting me at work anytime you want.”

“What did he say?” Jim took off his coat and threw it on the chair.

I flopped down on the sofa by the fireplace. “He said that it’s a public place, and nobody will be turned away, whether they have a reason to be treated or not.” Jim crouched in front of the fireplace and started scooping out the ashes. “And he said it loud enough for everyone in the building to hear.”

“Hmmm. Well, at least that’s something.” He put three logs in the fireplace, then started crumpling up some newspaper.

“Oh, and Mr. Sorensen stopped in for his check-up. He wants us to drop by sometime so he can say thank you. I think he wants to make us dinner.”

“Sounds like we’ve made at least one more friend in town. Maybe that will help balance out the dozens of enemies I’ve made for us.” He lit the fire, then took a cigar out of the box on the mantle. “I’m headed outside for a bit.”

“Okay,” I sighed. When I heard the front door shut, I just stared at the crackling fire for a while. “It’s really not that bad.” My first day here, I volunteered for the overnight shift. The graveyard shift would also give me a chance to help with the search for this creature - whatever it was - in the mountains. There wasn’t a lot I could do in terms of actually helping find the thing, but when they did go out to hunt it down, I could be in the truck waiting just in case someone was injured.

“Not that he’d let me do that, but it’s a thought,” I told myself.

I got up and went into the kitchen to start the water boiling for spaghetti. I set the pot of water on the stove, and as I walked past the window, I saw Jim standing out there in the snow. He was staring off at something with an odd look on his face. Almost as if he’d seen a ghost. Moving around to the breezeway, I could see who it was that Jim was watching.

Daken was standing there in the treeline. He was wearing the leather jacket and Flames cap we’d given him for Christmas, and as far as I could tell, he was just standing. The more I watched them, the more I could see the family resemblance. Jim took his cigar out of his mouth.

Daken asked him something. I could see that. But I couldn’t hear him, or tell what he said.

I could, however, guess based on Jim’s answer. “Yeah, she’s somethin’ else. You have no idea.”

I could see Daken shake his head and he adjusted his hat.

I heard the water boiling. “Damn,” I cursed under my breath, then went into the kitchen to start dinner. I wasn’t supposed to be a part of this conversation, anyway. And if Jim wanted me to know what had happened, he would tell me.

It was almost ten minutes before Jim came back inside.

  
  


It was all over the news: the weather was changing, and things were going to get bad. We had predictions of a shift in the winds, bringing arctic air down from the north, and moisture from the mountains. And that could only mean one thing: we were expecting a lot of snow.

So much, in fact, that both the clinic, and the station called Jim and I, asking us to stay at the hotel downtown so we could easily come in and help if necessary.

We locked up the house and went down to check into the hotel. I had a suspicion Jim had somehow established that his son was staying there based on how uncomfortable he was at the thought of us being there, too.

“Why don’t we see if Hank and Kurt will let us sleep on their floor?” I asked as I buckled my seatbelt.

“You hate sleeping on the floor. You slept in that chair back in California, rather than the floor.”

“I don’t hate it. I just didn’t want you stepping on me in the middle of the night.” I told him.   
“Besides, you’ll be sleeping on the floor, and I’ll be sleeping on you.”

That made him smile, then chuckle. “Alright. But I’m not calling. We’re just going over there and crashing. Planning ahead for things like this isn’t really my way.”

“Oh, I am well aware of that.”

When we left that night, I had no idea just how long it would be before we would get back home. If I had known, I might have cleaned out the refrigerator before leaving.

We talked a little bit about Mr. Sorensen, wondering how he would be with just Miguel there to help him out. Emilio would be in the hospital for at least another two weeks, and then in bedrest at home for a while.

Then Jim asked about Jake and where he would be staying. I told him about the sleeping room in the back of the clinic. “I guess nobody knows about him yet.”

“A couple people do, but they don’t talk.”

“But someone talked about you, didn’t they?” He asked.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure there were rumors, anyway, since I’d had so many different jobs in the last ten years.” I hadn’t thought much about how the word got out about me. Actually, my own charts should have been as private as anyone else’s. Even the lab techs weren’t allowed to share information amongst themselves, only with the attending physician and the nurse treating me.

Which meant either Dr. Murphy or Dr. Green, since they were the two physicians. And I didn’t want to think that Jake might have told anyone.

“Now you’re thinking, and being suspicious. That’s my job.” He pulled into the parking lot behind the building. “Leave it to me to figure out what’s going on in there. But you know that storm I was telling you about last week? I think it’s still brewing. We just got the front of it on New Year’s Eve.”

The snow had already begun to fall. We got our bags out of the trunk of the car, and walked up those now-familiar steps together. Then Jim went up and banged on the door.

“We’re stayin’ with you for a couple of days,” he told Kurt when he opened the door.

I smiled and gave Kurt a hug. “I told him we should call.”

“That’s not his style.” Kurt showed us into their living room. Jim took off his coat and dropped his duffle bag by the radiator under the window and looked out into the street. “We’re gonna get snowed in. And work wants us close enough we can walk in if necessary.”

“Understandable,” Kurt told him. “Actually, if you hold on a sec, I’ll text Hank and hopefully he can pick up some more supplies. Seeing as how we have five more mouths to feed.”

“Five?” I asked.

“Yeah, you’re one, and he’s four.”

Something felt weird about the way Kurt was acting. I dropped my bag behind the sofa, and it made him jump - quite literally.

Jim noticed it, too.

“How long has she been gone?” Jim asked.

Kurt shook his head. “Only a day. And we know where she is. But the problem is that we’re not sure how to get in touch with her. Hank went out there to find her and bring her back.”

“So she found it?” Jim picked up his coat and put it on again, then took his phone out of his pocket and called someone on his speed dial. That meant it was either Kurt, Hank, Me, or Travis.

“She… may have discovered what it is and where it has been hiding itself, but if the storm is going to be bad enough for them to call you in and live in town for a while, then there’s not much hope in finding it if she’s correct.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “She thinks it’s an elemental spirit.”

Jim stared at him for a few moments, with what might have been a look of actual fear on his face. It was either fear or anger at Sage’s stupidity for going out there on her own. Either way, I could hear Travis call his name a few times before Jim answered. “Travis? Great, I need your help. More accurately, I need your truck. Can you come by and pick me up just outside the furniture store on Riverside Drive?”

I picked up my EMT bag and slung it over my shoulder. “I’m going with you,” I told him quietly. He snapped his fingers and shook his head. I just shrugged and headed toward the door.

“Yeah, I’ll be down there waiting. We just gotta go find someone before it starts getting bad out there.” He followed me down the stairs as he talked to Travis. “Thanks. I’ll see ya in a few, bub.” Jim hung up his phone and tucked it back in his pocket. “Go back inside.”

“Not a chance. There’s no guarantee that help will be able to reach you out there if someone is injured. And it isn’t like you can call someone at the clinic and have them come with you just because someone might get hurt. They’re strapped enough as it is, what with me being moved to night shift and them being down one nurse during the day. You telling me to stay home is just being overprotective. I’ll stay in the truck and wait for you.”

He just stood there, staring at me for a few moments, then grabbed my hand and stuffed it into his pocket. “Jus’ like your mom. Always right, dammit.”

  
  


I was so grateful that Travis drove up in his Yukon. It’s one thing to have a pickup truck going out into the country, but when it was snowing in big, heavy clumps, and the wind was blowing everything on and over the side, an SUV really is a necessity.

Kurt stayed back at the apartment to wait just in case Hank and Sage managed to get home. But considering how bad it was snowing, and the fact that they had driven out in a rental car, it was unlikely they would make it home on their own.

I rode in the back and sorted through my kit. I had replenished some of my supplies since the last time I’d used it, but I only had two small rolls of gauze (one of them a plaster gauze), no sling, and only one codeine shot left. I wrote a note to myself on the top of the bag using the grease pencil I used for marking casts.

And then I waited.

It took us almost two hours to get out to the mountain Kurt had marked on the map, and after that, another fifteen minutes just to get from the road up to the treeline and path.

“Are you going to be okay in here? I don’t know how long it will be, but I probably don’t have enough gas to keep the car running the whole time and keep the heater going,” Travis apologized as he pulled the snowshoes out of the back.

“There are blankets here and if I get desperate, I can always dig a hole in the snow and settle in like a rabbit.”

Jim laughed. “A couple of hours, and the whole truck will be settled in like a rabbit.” He climbed into the back seat and kissed me a lot longer than usual. “Take care of yourself. Lock the doors, and don’t let anything in unless you’re sure it’s one of us.”

“I will… I’ll use my better judgment.”

Jim sighed. “I guess that’s the best I can ask for.”

In the time since we had parked the Yukon, the wind had shifted again, and it was coming down off the mountain. “You’d better go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

I watched them snowshoe up to the tree line, each wearing a backpack, and Jim carrying a makeshift stretcher in one hand. It was just a couple of poles with a blanket tied between them, but if someone was injured, it would be an effective sled on that snow. And then I watched them go up a path between the trees, and they were gone.

Having lived in California for so long, and being in Canada for the first winter in almost ten years, I had forgotten how much noise snow can make when it’s really coming down hard. Not only could I hear it on the roof and windows, but I could actually hear it falling outside, too. Now, normally that would be something lovely and romantic, but with a storm like this, it was bad news. It meant the wind wasn’t blowing, and that meant that those clouds that were dumping all of that snow on us was staying right where it was.

I looked around the SUV to see if there was a portable radio or something I could listen to, but almost as soon as I had crawled to the back, there was a knock on one of the windows.

For a split-second, I thought  it was the search party, already back from their adventure, but when I crawled up to the front, I found myself looking into a face that I’d seen far too often already.

“Oh, come on, let me in, it’s cold as hell out here, and…”

I rolled down the window just a little bit. “What are you doing here, Daken?”

He looked around, then turned to leave, but apparently decided better, and came right back. “Fine, I was following you guys. I saw you leave, and figured the do-goody brigade was heading out into the worst weather imaginable to look for some big bad wolf that’s been eating cows from the surrounding farms.” He was shivering, and something in his voice really did sound desperate. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

“The last time you saw me, you had your claws at my throat.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not very good when I meet people.”

“The time before that, you threatened to slaughter my mother - your words.”

He threw what can only be described as a tantrum, picking up some snow and throwing it away into the air. “Yeah, well, first impressions aren’t my thing, either.”

“And this time, you’re demanding help? What are you doing out here?”

He leaned against the car and stuck his claw in the small space between the window and the frame of the door. “My car got stuck down the road. And I walked up here. Kind of ran up here, only to get stuck in the snow, myself.”

“No snowshoes? Oh, I’m so sorry, they didn’t bring any spa--”

A huge crashing sound and a howl came from the treeline. Daken turned toward the sound, and crouched in a fighting stance. “It’s here.”

“What is? Wait… the thing they’re looking for?” I unlocked the door and opened it a crack. “Get in.”

“What?”

“Just get in. That thing will…”

Daken took two steps back and shook his head. “Not a chance.” He took off his new jacket and tossed it in the front seat, then closed the door. “That thing? It just knocked down those trees.”

I looked over to where he was pointing, and saw a path where there wasn’t one before, and a huge cloud of powdery snow rising up into the air.

“It could crush this truck without even breaking a sweat.” He took another step away. “Get in the middle there, between the seats and sit. Then don’t move a muscle. You said you can change scents? Well, if you can, make this whole place smell like a fuckin’ flower garden, or a pine tree, or something naturish.”

I watched him run further out into the clearing, then stop and fully extend all of his claws. He really was a lot like his father.

Just before I took cover, I switched my phone on and set it to record, pointed it in the direction of the clearing, and propped it up on the dashboard.

Now, I did catch a glimpse of the thing, and to say it was terrifying would be the understatement of the year. It had a very long head that came to a sharp point, much like a shark’s. That explained the bite marks. However, the head was tiny in comparison to the body. It was long and serpentine and it floated above the ground. But the strangest thing about it was that the creature looked as if it was made of glass.

I didn’t stare for long, though. As soon as the phone was set up, I backed down, sat in the middle of the truck, and tried to concentrate on the scent of a pine forest. And I prayed.


	24. The Unbreakable Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that they've crossed claws with the creature, they have a better idea about who they might need to call upon to help.

I was injured. Not by the creature, whatever it was, but from when the truck overturned. So, I guess, indirectly, it was because of the creature.

I couldn’t actually see anything that was happening outside. Daken was fighting something. I could hear him scream and roar and yell all kinds of obscenities at the thing. And then I heard it roar, it sounded like a cross between a whale call and the north wind howling down into the valley.

I was furiously trying to think of the north woods smell, to cover my own body odor, and the smell of blood that was already starting to tinge the air. It had to have been Daken’s blood. But what I ended up creating was something like a cross between a gin and tonic, and one of those car air fresheners that’s supposed to smell like pine, but smells a lot like alcohol and cardboard.

In other words, it didn’t work very well.

The sounds coming from outside were terrifying, but then came another sound that was even more scary. The emergency radio went off in the truck.

I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, but reach up and yank the cords out from under the dashboard. The sound stopped, but I could hear the creature coming toward me. I’m sure, based on how quickly it reacted, that it was unaware of my presence before the sound and movement coming from inside the Yukon.

It shook Daken off of its back,  and then turned to look at the source of the noise - half-covered in snow, and probably smelling like pine-scented bathroom cleaner.

With one flick of its tail, it pushed the SUV over onto its side, and I, and everything else in the truck went rolling with it. My bag hit me in the face, and then I crashed against the side door. There were a few blankets and tools that came crashing down and cracked the side window, and everything that had been in the back of the truck came flying around the cabin.

The tail came down again near the truck and brought up a huge wave of snow that covered half of the windows, and made it almost completely dark inside.

I scrambled to get my phone, which had been thrown across the truck and ended up near the armrest on the driver’s side. The case seemed to have done its job. The screen wasn’t damaged, and it seemed to still be recording. I turned it off and shoved it into my pocket, then went about the task of re-organizing my surroundings and trying to wrap myself up in a blanket  for protection.

The sound of the fight must have brought the others down from the mountain, though. I heard Jim screaming, then the sound of his own claws coming out, and then a sound like fingernails on the chalkboard. I could only assume that was the sound of him fighting the glass creature.

Through the cracked front windshield, I watched as the creature spun around again, and then it was almost like slow-motion as that long tail whipped around and the truck was hit one more time. This time, the vehicle turned completely upside-down. I fell onto the roof, and then the tool kit, which had become dislodged after the last blow from the creature’s tail, fell on my head.

  
  


When I regained consciousness, I was in the snow. Sage was wrapped up in blankets, lying next to me, and we were both laying on a tarp with yet another blanket covering our faces.

“Breathing is regular, but she looks a little blue,” I muttered. “Heat packs in the bag.”

Almost as soon as I said the words, I became aware of the warmth under my arms and on my neck. I brought my hand up to the heat pack, took it off of my neck, and moved it over to Sage’s chest. “We should get you to the clinic.”

“Jim! She’s awake! She’s moving!” The voice was muffled, but I recognized it as belonging to Travis.

“They should wrap your feet, too. Frostbite might set in.” I looked up at the blanket, and more specifically the sagging from the snow that had accumulated on top of it. And then a few moments later, the blanket had moved, and I was staring up into the most worried, relieved, and fearful face I think I’d ever seen. “Hello, love,” I said.

“Can you be moved?” He asked in a shaky voice. Slowly, he held out his hand and placed it on my cheek.

“I’ve already been moved. I don’t think it will--” He pulled me up into his arms and held me so tightly, I wondered if he might break me. But then my own fear came back, and I remembered everything that had happened. “It was…”

“It’s gone. Went back up the mountain,” he said softly.

“Is Daken alright?”

“He’s fine. He’s got my genes.”

“Sage needs to get warmer. Heat packs… Is the truck going to be alright?”

“You ask about everyone but yourself.” Jim kissed my cheek. “Are you alright?”

“I hurt. Pretty much everywhere. And I have a headache. But nothing’s broken.” The tears started coming, and I felt like an idiot, but I really couldn’t help it. I had never been so afraid in my life. There was a loud thud and crash, that startled me. I started shivering and hid my face in Jim’s coat.

“That was the SUV. Daken and Hank are probably turning it right-side up again. Are you sure you’re alright?”

I nodded, and to prove it, I smiled and kissed his hand. “Oh, did Hank and Sage get to see it?”

“No, which is a damn shame. And as soon as I got there, it just disappeared, turned into something like a cloud of snow, and went back up the mountain.”

I reached into my pocket and brought out my cell phone. “There’s video. I’m not sure how good it turned out, but the phone is okay. I had just managed to get it before the thing turned the truck over.” I put the phone in his hand and then relaxed against his arm.

Jim sighed and shook his head, then tucked the phone into his pocket. “Dammit, Lucy, if things keep happening to you, I’m never letting you leave the house again.”

“I always wanted to be a mother and housewife when I was a kid,” I told him with a shaky voice.

“Yeah, well, that sounds pretty good to me.”

  
  


They managed to get the SUV running again, and the ride home was awkward, to put it mildly. Hank sat in the front with Travis, and assured him that it would be no problem at all to get him a new vehicle with a reinforced roll cage and shatter-proof windows.

Sage had regained consciousness, and then I gave her the last codeine shot. She was sleeping in the back.

Which left Jim, Myself, and Daken in the center seat. I was resting with my head on Jim’s shoulder, his arm wrapped around me. Daken was on the other side of me, leaning against the door with his elbow on the window.

“Thanks for saving her,” Jim said softly.

“Yeah, well, thanks for the bourbon, and the… action figures.”

Jim had given him action figures for Christmas. Specifically, Gundam models and Power Rangers action figures. He had also written a card that said, “Something a dad’s supposed to give a kid.” Nobody trusted Daken, but at least this peace offering seemed to have been accepted for what it was.

“So, that thing. Adamantium claws won’t hurt it. All it does is take a few chunks out, and they crystalize right back,” Daken grumbled.

“It’s not made of crystal, though. That shit’s colder than dry ice.”

“Burns,” I groaned. “That’s why there were blisters around the wounds. And that’s why it looked like a shark bite.”

Jim put his hand on my head. “Go back to sleep.”

There was a long silence, and I was nearly asleep when Daken spoke again. “I like her. She’s not like your other mutant friends who I wish would just choke on their own arrogance.”

“No, she’s not like them.”

“You gonna stay up here?”

“Off the radar? Yeah. As long as I can.”

“How do you know your friends won’t come looking for you?”

Jim put his hand on the side of my head, so I could only hear his voice through his chest. “I don’t know anything. But if they come looking for The Wolverine, they’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

We went directly downtown to The House of Blues as I called it in my pain-induced silliness, and then Jim called Jake and asked him to come as soon as possible. Daken paced around the room for a few minutes, under the suspicious eye of Kurt, then said he was going out to get Chinese food.

Jim put Sage in one of the bedrooms and I instructed them on how to treat her from my place on the living room sofa. After she was settled in, and Jake had agreed to come over as soon as he could find someone to come in to work for him, Jim took out my phone and handed it to Hank.

“Have I mentioned that my wife is a genius?”

“Not in the past few hours, no. What did she do right this time?” Hank asked. He had gone back to his Beast form again, and brought out his reading glasses.

“Everything,” I answered.

“She recorded it on her phone.”

Hank looked up at Jim, and then over at me. “You are a genius. Did you get anything?”

Jim nodded. “Look.”

He came over to the sofa and gently lifted me up, then sat down and put my head back in his lap. “You’re covered in bruises, Lucy.”

“Yeah, I guarantee it will look worse tomorrow.”

“This is amazing. And it’s nothing like anything I’ve seen before.” Hank watched the video to the end, and then played it again.

“Oh, good. ‘Cause I don’t want to think there’s more than one of these polar snakes flying around the mountains.”

Jim smoothed back my hair, then put his hand over my eyes. “Go to sleep.”

“What, and miss all the talk about the thing that almost killed me? I saw it first-hand as an observer, not a fighter. So, I think…”

“You watched it, too?” Hank asked. “How did it move? What did it look like? I mean, impressions, not physical descriptions.”

“It was like a feral cat, chasing a badger out of its nest of kittens.” I paused for a moment. “No, that doesn’t make sense. It was more like a badger, chasing a dog out of its den.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Jim asked.

“No. The badger’s den is its home. Whether there are kits in there or not. Are they called kits? Or are they pups?” I closed my eyes. “Either way, it’s protecting something, and not necessarily its offspring.” I let out a long sigh. “That’s what it looked like, anyway. It came down angry, and then ran back to the place where it was comfortable.”

I think we were all surprised when Daken came back with two giant bags of food. He put it down on the table, took out a white carton and some chopsticks, then came over to the sofa and tossed Jim’s wallet at him. “Thanks for dinner, dad.” He sat on the arm of the sofa by my feet and started eating what smelled like beef and broccoli.

“Hey, you jerk, when did you--?”

I pushed myself up and somehow stood upright. “Smells good. Too hungry to sleep. Thanks for dinner, Jim.”

Jim got up and helped me to the table, and helped me find the noodles. Jim took out the Kunk Po Chicken for himself. “Hank, you should… what’s wrong?”

He was staring at the phone. “I need to download this and look closer. This thing doesn’t behave like an elemental spirit at all. We may have called in the wrong specialist.”

“What do you mean? Who should we have called?”

“Someone who knows a lot more about talking to gods.”

 


	25. Not All Mutants II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The peacemaker has come to visit and help with the beast in the mountain. Ororo also gets a glimpse into what Jim is like around Lucy, and it surprises her.

Not all Mutants have useful abilities. That is to say, there are some that just have a few more ears, or who can see in a dozen extra colors, or who can turn turnips into carrots. Okay, that last one’s pretty damn useful if you’ve got a turnip farm. But my point is that there are some who just have these little things that they do, and there’s nothing really dangerous about them.

Unless you’re allergic to carrots. In which case, you shouldn’t be eating turnips, anyway. Nobody should. I don’t like turnips.

But then there are some who have mutant abilities that are so far and beyond anything even I could imagine with my indestructible husband, friends who either a blue elf, a beastly giant blue cat, and a man who can reduce a plastic spoon into a puddle of crude oil.

And I was about to meet one of them.

“She’ll be here either tomorrow or Friday,” Jim told me as he stuffed his jeans and buffalo plaid shirt into his duffle bag. “I told her to just come to our house, since there’s more room.”

“But the airport is still closed for the winter. Who’s going to pick her up in Edmonton or Calgary? Is she driving?” It had been four days since our adventure up on the mountain. I had been given yet another leave of absence from work, and Sage was finally up and walking around again.

“No, she’s flying in,” Sage told me, handing me a cup of tea. I had made my peace with the fact that this gorgeous genius woman who had more of a past with all of my mutant friends than I ever would, was staying around for a while. Especially since she was genuinely impressed with my video.

“But the airport…”

“It isn’t so much flying in as riding in on the air currents she creates,” Kurt corrected.

“Oh.” I hadn’t imagined such a thing. Then again, Kurt’s little trick of slipping through the floor and appearing half a kilometer north of there was something I hadn’t imagined, either.

Again, I suddenly felt my “Not all Mutants” defensiveness starting to surge. “Well, I hope she can find her way alright,” I said, weakly.

I felt this sudden urge to get back to work, leave of absence or no. I mean, I knew that people would talk, and they’d wonder where I got all these bruises, especially since Jim looked like, well, Jim. We had told everyone it was an accident. And Travis’s truck was a pretty good testimonial, but the fact that I was the only one who was injured left a lot of people scratching their heads.

Jim came up to me and held out his hand. “Ready to go?”

I looked around the room at all of those amazing and powerful people, and this horrible and selfish defeatist voice inside me told me that I didn’t belong with them.

So, was I ready to go? I nodded and picked up my purse and my EMT bag. “See ya later,” I told them, then waved and headed toward the door. Jim just stood there for a moment, then said his good-byes and followed me.

I was already standing out at the car when he caught up with me. Thankfully, my scarf was hiding most of my face. “It’s cold,” I told him. He nodded, then unlocked the passenger door and opened it. I sat and a few moments later he got in and started it up. Well, it took a few tries. The battery may have been new that season, but no matter how new and how powerful it is, the middle of January takes its toll on batteries and starters.

We were near the turn that took us out of town when he spoke. “We’ll talk when we get home.”

“What about?”

“I think mostly about you. And that look you gave us.”

“What look?”

“We’ll talk when we get home.”

I didn’t know if he was angry with me, or frustrated, or if he just wanted to talk. But no matter what it was, all I really wanted to do was go home, take a shower, and sleep in my own bed. “Okay.”

It really was nice to be home. I missed our tiny little house, the breezeway between the garage and the kitchen, the front door with its mismatched red paint, and the musty-sweet smell of the place. And I really missed my spot on the sofa right by the fireplace. Jim carried in all of our things and set them down by the stairs, then, after I had flopped down in my favorite spot, he kicked the coffee table aside, brought up the small footstool, and sat directly in front of me.

“Tell me.”

Everyone has that one look they give people that basically says “You’re going to tell me the truth right now, and we’re cutting out all of the bullshit.” I think the look that Jim had could have straightened out Illinois politics.

“I don’t really know how to explain it without it sounding worse than it is.”

“Then it probably is worse than it is, here.” He put his finger in the middle of my chest.

“I feel like a turnip in a field of sunflowers.”

“Turnips are disgusting. You’re not a turnip.” He put his hands on my knees and leaned forward again. “And we’re not sunflowers. There’s nothing pretty about any of us. Well, Sage is physically attractive, but she has her own set of problems.”

“It’s just that you all have these really amazing and powerful abilities.”

“And you don’t?”

“No. All I can do is make things taste different. Back there, when Daken was fighting that thing, I couldn’t even change the smell in the truck. I think it was because I was so scared, but if I can’t even do this little thing, then what use am I to any of you?” Saying it out loud was a lot more difficult than I had expected. And I sounded like a whiny little kid.

“Anybody would have been scared enough of that thing to get flustered. The only reason that the rest of us didn’t, is because we were trained to be killers. Our instincts are always to fight, and believe me, that’s not a good thing.” He tilted his head to one side. “I would rather have your abilities. I think they’re more amazing and far more useful.”

“What, being able to change the taste of something?”

“No, not that. Being able to bring someone back to life from the brink of death. I just keep thinking back to what you did for that Langley boy, and Emilio, and countless others that I don’t even know. Yeah, our instincts are to fight, but your instincts are to jump in and save. Even when you were seriously injured, yourself, all you wanted to do was help Sage and make sure everyone else was okay.”

“She was--”

“You were in just as bad shape as she was, Lucy. When Jake checked you out, you had bruises, hairline fractures, your fingers were frostbitten, you had a concussion, and you just brushed it all off.”

He got up and sat next to me on the sofa, then pulled me over to rest my head on his shoulder and he kissed the top of my head. “Anyone can take a life. Anyone can kill. That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years. But, not all people can go out there and save a life. Not all people can bring someone back from near-death, then feed them their favorite soup and heal their faith in humanity. Not all people can care about everyone universally, whether they get along with them or not. And not all people can save someone like me from the life of a living weapon.”

I had been chanting my “Not all Mutants” mantra for so long, it hadn’t occurred to me that I was missing the entire point. Jim saw it, though. I wrapped my arms around his waist and closed my eyes. I didn’t have words to tell him how grateful I was for what he said, but I’m pretty sure he knew.

  
  


Jim has this euphoric reaction after sex. He turns into a smiling, cuddling mess under the covers, and when he gets up to go putter around the house, he’ll be whistling, singing, and sometimes he’ll stop and come back in to cuddle with me some more. Which is great, but also makes it kind of hard for me to get sleep sometimes.

Back then, I just thought that’s the way he was. Everyone has their own reaction to physical love, and I knew that he’d spent so much time alone in his life, maybe this was just his way of compensating and getting the happy feelings out.

Our visitor arrived early the next morning. Jim and I were still lying naked in bed with four quilts on top of us, and Jim humming peacefully as I tried to get a few more precious hours of sleep. But there was a howling wind blowing outside that caught his attention. “Lucy, get up. She’s here,” he told me, gently running his knuckles down my cheek. “Or we could just stay in bed like this until she comes inside and finds us here. I know that’s what I’d rather do.”

I opened one eye. “You’re mean.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He got out of bed and pulled on his sweatpants, then tossed me my robe. “Come on, sweetheart. Time for you to meet one of my favorite people in the world.”

I rolled over onto my back. “I’m still your favorite, though, right?”

He crawled on top of me and kissed me in a way that made me think he was going to get back into bed for another round. “You’re my favorite in the universe, Lucy. Now stop playing jealous wife, and let’s go welcome our guest.”

He pulled a t-shirt over his head and started whistling a show tune that I knew, but couldn’t quite recognize in my 4am stupor.

I got up and got dressed, more than I could say for Jim who stayed in his old sweats and t-shirt, then tried to brush my hair into something decent, and opted for wearing Jim’s Flames cap, instead.

When I went downstairs, Jim brought brought me into the living room to meet the most beautiful, impressive woman I’d ever seen in my life. She stood nearly six feet tall, had gorgeous white hair that came down to the middle of her back, dark skin, and clear, almost white eyes. “It’s you!” I recognized her immediately from that window in the school, way back when I was a kid.

“I’m impressed that you remember me, Lucy. We’ve never met. My name’s Ororo.” Her smile was warm and kind, and she held out her hand for me to take. “You’re quite the buzz these days. Everyone wants to know about you.”

She was so different from Sage. I don’t know what I had expected, but whereas Sage gave off this cool, calculating impression - almost as if she was analyzing every move and mannerism, Ororo was warm and welcoming, and friendly. As she stood there, she just looked like the personification of peace.

Jim put his arm around my waist. “Yeah, well, you’re not gonna tell ‘em much.” He nodded for us to go into the dining room. “Just enough to get rid of their curiosity, and leave out the rest.”

“I don’t even know what the rest is, Logan. I will reserve judgment until after our business is done.” She sat at the table, and I flipped the switch on the coffee maker.

“The rest? You spend a couple of minutes talking to Lucy, and you’ll understand what “the rest” is. Hell, she’s even got that wayward child of mine eating out of her hand.”

“Daken? You can’t be serious.”

Jim nodded, then motioned for me to sit with her. “Go, talk. Get to know each other. She’s gonna be your new best friend.”

“You’re my best friend.”

He paused for a moment, smiling. “New second-best friend.”

As I waited for the coffee to finish, and she sat at the table staring at the two of us, he stood there in the kitchen, frying up some bacon, singing “The Hockey Song” by Stompin’ Tom Connors. Ororo leaned across in my direction. “Darling, I don’t know what you’ve done to him, but this is the greatest thing I’ve seen in my whole life.”

I waved my hand. “This? Oh, he’s always like this in the mornings.” I picked up two coffee mugs and set them on the table. Jim smiled with his tongue in his cheek. “What?” I asked, “This isn’t how you usually act?”

“You want milk and sugar in your coffee, ‘Ro?”

I looked over at her. She shook her head, smiling in amusement. “Please. And Lucy, why don’t you have a seat? I want to hear about what’s going on from someone who hasn’t been around this kind of madness their whole life.”

“It is kind of like madness, isn’t it?” I poured us some coffee, and brought the milk and sugar to the table. “I mean, it’s the sort of thing you would think was an hallucination.”

“There are a lot of things out there that seem like hallucinations. Sometimes I’m not sure which came first, the hallucination or the beast. Are they fashioned after our nightmares, or do our nightmares fuel their existence?” she mused into her coffee as she poured in some milk.

“Chicken or the egg? Yeah, well, this was neither. It was more like an animal.” I took a sip of my coffee. “Wait, but not an animal like some crazy beast. It was more like it had animal instincts. So, you know how tigers and lions and wolves and sharks are all portrayed as these horrible, dangerous creatures that kill people? But they’re really not. They’re just other living creatures, just like us. Exactly like us, only not as violent as we are. They attack for food and to protect their families and territories.”

Ororo just looked at me with some kind of understanding and almost a dreamy expression.

“Yeah, well, that’s what this was like. I mean, it was scary, and terrifying, but in the same way that we would be to a squirrel that had never seen a human before. And if the squirrel is in your attic and you go after it with a broom, then…” I sat my coffee mug on the table and bit my lip.

“Go on,” she urged.

“Well, I’m wondering if it’s just the broom of the mountain. And just like some people eat squirrels, maybe the cows were what it wanted to eat and as for the people, it just wanted them to go away.”

“But it attacked without provocation,” Jim said as he brought over plates of bacon and scrambled eggs.

“How do we know? I mean, what’s provocation? We put out mouse traps and attack them when all they’ve done is scramble around and eat the crumbs we drop.” I got up and went into the kitchen for some hot sauce.

“See what I mean?” Jim whispered to her. I glanced over at them, and he had his fork pointing in her direction. “If you tell anyone about her, I’m coming after you.”

“I don’t think I understand yet, Logan. And you are obviously very much under her spell.” She pushed his fork away and turned toward me. “You see the world with compassion, Lucy,” Ororo told me. “With a kindness and understanding that is rare in the face of these horrors.”

I laughed. “Oh, these aren’t horrors. I said it was terrifying, and it was scary, but this isn’t a horror.” I put some hot sauce on my eggs, then handed the bottle to Jim. “If you want to see real horrors, go down to Atlanta and visit the ER at Grady Hospital on a Saturday night. Or go out to Rwanda and visit with the families of those who were maimed and slaughtered in the attempted genocide there. That’s where the real horrors are. Humans are the most horrible things in this world. I say that all the time, and I will firmly stand by my opinion.”

“So, you think humans are the true evil?” She asked.

“No, not that. But I think it all balances out. Humans are capable of doing some really awful things, and they’re also capable of doing some really wonderful things. The problem with people is that we usually see one or the other, and rarely both at the same time.” I took a bit of egg and then stuffed a piece of bacon in my mouth. “And most people have a complete lack of perspective. It’s ‘cause we can’t see other people’s experiences. That’s a pretty big weakness.”

“But you’re different? You see things from different sides at the same time?” She asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t claim to do that. But I do see things that others don’t. I think it’s a combination of what I’ve seen in my work experience, and how people taste things.”

She set her fork down and clasped her hands with her elbows on either side of her plate. “Tell me, please, what you mean by how people taste things.”

I smiled and nodded over to Jim. “He tastes watermelon.”

“Okay, and that means something to you.”

“Yeah. Nobody else tastes watermelon. Just Jim.”

Jim set his fork on the table and looked up at me. I supposed at that time I hadn’t told him about it yet. “You mean, you can’t make watermelon for anyone else?”

I shrugged and shook my head. “No. Only you. Watermelon has always been my favorite. And ever since I was, like five, I tried to create watermelon flavor for people. The closest I could get was pear. But then for him, I can just do it.”

“And this means something?” Ororo asked.

“Well, what people like means something. And what I’m able to make for people means something, too. I think that’s how I knew Daken didn’t want to hurt me, even when he had his claws at my throat. He tasted something in my coffee that I didn’t put there. When that happens, it’s something really special.”

I finished my bacon and set my plate aside. “Way back when I visited the school, I didn’t try to make watermelon flavor. I just wanted to make something that this guy would like. And that’s probably why he got pork chop instead of steak.”

The woman just stared at me for a while, smiling.

“I know I’m trying to find more meaning in this little trick that I can do, but it’s really all I’ve got, so…” I shrugged and picked up my coffee mug. “It’s all I can do.”

Jim stood and picked up my plate, then kissed me on the forehead. “There’s a lot more to you than just that,” he told me. “Tell her about your blood.”

She just stared at Jim in awe as he walked into the kitchen. I think she was more mesmerized by the way he acted around me, than she was in anything I had to say. When she looked back at me, she pointed at him doing dishes in the kitchen. “This is real?”

I nodded and smiled.

“All the time?”

I glanced over at Jim and nodded again.

She shook her head and took a sip of her coffee. “So, tell me about your blood.”


	26. Contaminated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy is told that her mutant gene has contaminated Jim, and she can't cope with it. So, she runs away.

Everyone has that chapter in their lives that they wish they hadn’t written. We do things that we think back on and regret. We are embarrassed by our own reactions to things, and we make decisions without thinking them through. Blame it on whatever you want, we make mistakes.

Some of us make really big mistakes that end up having the exact opposite effect of what we had hoped for.

My chapter is particularly embarrassing, and I would like to start with excuses, but that would be getting ahead of the story. So, instead, I’ll start by saying I am always too trusting of people, and I never expect anyone would actually want to hurt me. And maybe the intent wasn’t to hurt me, but to just educate me, but I still got hurt.

We had made a habit of going downtown in the afternoons, spending the day at the House of Blue, and then after Jim came back from work, going home and having dinner together. It meant I could spend a lot of time getting to know Jim’s friends, and they could get to know me.

So, when Sage asked me some questions about my blood, I told her what my mother had said - about it creating a taste that would trigger memories.

“You wouldn’t mind if I took a sample, would you?” she asked. “I think yours is a unique ability, and I’d like to find out more about it.”

“I guess not. What do you need, a drop? A phial?”

“Can you get me a phial of blood?”

I smiled. “I’m a nurse. I could get you a pint of blood if you needed it, but I won’t go that far. I’ll just ask Jake to bring some things over before he goes in to work.”

It seemed so innocent. And nobody else said or thought anything about it. Why would they? We were all friends, and we were all working toward the same ends. If there was something in my blood that might help with it, then I was glad to have been of use.

So, she took a swab of my saliva, and a sample of my blood, and then went to go work with Hank in their lab.

Two days later was Groundhog Day. Nobody up here really celebrated it, but I always made a point of writing about it in my journals because somehow things were always weird on Groundhog day. This time was one of the weirdest ones ever.

I had gone over to the House of Blue a little earlier in the day. Jim needed to be at work early, but I didn’t mind because it gave me more time to sit around talking with Kurt.

I loved my time with Kurt. We had these great conversations about morals and ethics, and we played a “what would you do?” game. We’d challenge each other with situations where we’d be forced into a moral or ethical choice, and try to come up with the best solution to the problem. The question had to start with “what would you do” and then the person asking could add one one more question or stipulation after the other person’s answer.

“What would you do if you found out the reason that beast came down the mountain was because you’re here?” He asked me.

I pondered for a moment. “I think I would leave town. No, I know I’d leave town. Probably without telling anyone else, and then I would go somewhere safe, and hope the beast followed me there. That way I could lure it away from the people I loved and the innocent people of this town.”

He thought for a moment. “But you would be a martyr. And your loved ones would suffer at your loss.”

“But it would end the suffering of more people, and that’s what’s important. I couldn’t allow an entire town to suffer because of me. So, what would you do if your mutant power really was harmful to regular humans just by exposure?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s simple. We’ve all thought about this before. I would find somewhere far away from people and start a colony for myself and people like me.”

“But what if it was only you?”

“And I would have to live alone? Then I think I would rather die, but I wouldn’t commit suicide. I’d just go somewhere and hole myself up until someone either found a cure, or found a way to protect the world from me. I’d keep in contact with everyone via phone or internet or something like that, though.”

I nodded. “Okay, your turn.”

“Lucy,” Sage called from the other room. “Come in here for a moment, please.”

“I’ll be right back,” I promised Kurt.

“Go ahead, I’ll be here.”

I went into the lab. Hank had gone out for some supplies, apparently, so she had been examining and analyzing my blood on her own. I knew something of analyzing blood from nursing school, but some of the equipment that she and Hank were using was completely foreign to me.

She motioned to a chair near hers and was typing on her computer. It took her a few moments to finish before she looked up at me again. “So, I’ve run some tests, and there’s something interesting about your body fluids.”

“Yeah, they can change the taste of--”

“Not that. We know that. This is something else.”

I know she wasn’t trying to be rude, but everything she did seemed to agitate me lately. “Something else?” I asked.

“Well, two things, actually. The first is about your blood and saliva. I believe Ororo was telling me how Logan is acting very strangely, especially when he’s around you.”

“I wouldn’t know. I only know Jim the way he’s always been.”

“Well, I thought if he was acting strangely, then maybe there’s something he’s been doing that’s different than before. Sometimes when people change their diet or routine, it can alter their personality to an extent. We know that certain foods pacify people, and that exercise can bring about emotional changes in some people.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with how diet and exercise can change someone,” I told her sweetly.

She looked up from her computer screen and gave me a curious look. “I wasn’t finished.”

Of course she wasn’t.

“Like I said, a change in routine. Since he’s been in physical contact with you and your body fluids, things have changed, and I think I’ve discovered something interesting about it. It appears that you not only can give someone a temporary emotional response, but if your fluids are exchanged with another’s, it basically contaminates their blood for a time. I don’t know that I’ve seen this happen before.”

I froze at the word “contaminate.”

“In essence, whatever emotion is triggered would be perpetuated for many hours, possibly days based on the slow degeneration rate of this gene in your blood.”

“What?”

“I’m saying that the euphoric feeling that comes from your body fluids seems to stay active until the next dose. Isn’t that interesting?”

I shook my head in disbelief and disgust, trying to wrap my brain around what she was telling me. “You mean, what he’s feeling is actually a reaction to my saliva?”

She nodded. “It’s likely. I tested it with a sample of my own blood, and a specimen I acquired from a male test subject. Your gene certainly has a longer life in the male blood than my own, but it did have an effect on mine, as well.” The whole time she was telling me this, she kept typing notes into her computer.

Meanwhile, my whole life felt like it was crashing down around me. She had used the word “contaminated.” I had contaminated Jim, and all of those emotions he had been feeling for me weren’t real at all. They were just his reaction to the genes I had passed along to him in my saliva.

Of course it made sense why Daken didn’t attack me, too.

“It’s fascinating, really. I’m going to run some more tests and find out…” She looked up. “Lucy? What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Look, I just remembered I have to do something. I’ll… see you later, okay?” I got up and left the lab. She was saying something about another thing she discovered, but I couldn’t hear it over my own heartbeat in my ears.

Going into the living room, I picked up my coat, scarf, and hat and put them on.

“Where are you going?” Kurt asked.

“I need to go do something,” I told him.

Picking up my purse, I headed outside. At the bottom of the stairs, I looked back up and felt my stomach turn. “All this time,” I muttered to myself.

Hank was walking up the sidewalk as I turned out toward town. “Lucy! Where are you going?”

“Somewhere,” I said mindlessly.

“You should come back in. It’s really cold. I know Sage said she was almost finished with the analysis, and she wanted to talk to you about something really important.” Hank had his arms full with two bags - one from the hardware store and the other from the grocery store.

“Yeah, she talked to me. I just need to go get something, okay? I’ll see you later, Hank.” I nodded at him. “Take care.”

“Hey,” he told me as I headed down Riverside Drive. “Don’t be gone long. I’m making pizza for dinner.”

I couldn’t answer him. To be honest, I didn’t know how long I would be gone. I just needed to walk and think.

  
  


I didn’t walk for long. In fact, I only went down as far as the hotel, which also happened to be the location of the car rental. I rented a mid-size car for five days, not really thinking much about what it meant, me leaving.

After about thirty minutes, my phone started going off. First there were text messages from Kurt and Hank asking where I was, then phone calls. About ten minutes after that, Jim called me, and my heart sank. I was almost up to North Star, on my way to who-knows-where, and I nearly turned around and drove back, but instead I turned my phone off.

I didn’t have any clothes with me, or toiletries, phone charger, or anything of mine from home, really. I didn’t have my journal or my laptop, and the longer the mental list was, the more I felt like a stupid child who ran away from home, to make it only as far as the corner ‘cause they weren’t allowed to cross the street.

And I wanted to talk to my mom.

I stopped in High Level, a few hours north of Peace River, and checked in at the Day’s Inn there. Then I went out and bought myself a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a phone charger, and a loaf of bread and some peanut butter, then went back to the motel room.

It was small, it smelled like carpet cleaner, and it was nothing like home. The coffee pot was tiny, and wouldn’t brew even enough coffee for one person in my household. But then again, it was just me, so I wouldn’t have to worry about that. With a deep sigh, I set the coffee brewing, plugged my phone into the wall and turned it on.

Jim had called twenty-three times. He had sent me dozens of text messages that I didn’t even look at. I knew that whatever was in those messages would likely make me cry and make me want to go back home. Both things I was trying to fight off as hard as I could.

Instead, I called my mom

“Lucy, I’m surprised to hear from you. It’s really late, is something wrong?”

“I’m sorry, mom, I didn’t realize it was so late.” I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

“It isn’t that late. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what to do. I love him so much, but none of it is real. It’s my stupid mutant gene, it’s contaminated him, and none of this is even real.” I laid down on the bed and brought one pillow over my face. “They ran some tests, and I think the only reason he thinks he loves me is because he’s infected with my genes.”

I could hear my mom sigh on the other end of the line. “That’s not the case, dear. You should know that.”

“No, it’s true. They ran some tests on my blood and saliva.”

“And did you talk to Jim about it?”

“No, I haven’t.” I should have done. I knew that as soon as she had asked.

“Then go and talk to him. Try to figure out if you can--”

“I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” Mom sounded really concerned.

“Because I left. I rented a car and just left.”

My mother sighed, and there was a distinct change in her voice. “Dear, this isn’t like you.”

“I know.”

“You don’t run away from things, and I have never known you to be this emotional about something.”

“I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

My mom hummed. “I’m pretty sure I do, but that’s beside the point right now. You sound like you need some sleep. And then tomorrow morning, you need to go home.”

I sniffed and wiped my face on the blanket. “I know. I’m just afraid of what will happen if she was right about me.”

“Who? Who told you these things, anyway? I want to have a talk with them.”

“No, it’s okay, mom.”

“Where are you staying? Do you want me to call Jim?”

I did. And I also didn’t. I was too sad to give her an answer right away, and she took that as a very bad sign.

“Lucy, you need to get through this night, and then think on everything again tomorrow. If you want, just don’t tell me where you are, and I’ll send him a message that you’re safe, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And promise me you’ll talk to him tomorrow. He really does love you, whether you think it’s real or not.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, honey. Hang in there, alright? And call me when you get home.”

“I love you too, mom.”

After we hung up, I put the phone on the nightstand and just stayed right there, with the pillow over my head. I hadn’t even unpacked my shopping bags, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up again. It didn’t take long before I was asleep.

  
  


I dreamed about all sorts of things. I remember the dream about the creature from the mountain. In my dream, I had confronted it, and it had bit me, taking some of my blood. This caused the thing to shrink down to a much smaller size, around the size of a normal person, and it followed me around wherever I went like a lovesick puppy.

The strange thing was that everyone in town seemed to accept that I was some kind of Pied Piper character, and I could make all of their nightmares go away with just a drop of my blood.

I also dreamed about Mr. Sorensen. I had dreamed that he was somehow contaminated with my blood, and it had an adverse reaction on him, almost like a body rejecting an organ transplant. He was getting sicker and sicker, and there was nothing anyone could do for him. When I kept trying to go in and help him, I was shoved away every time by the people in town, telling me I was the one who caused all of his problems in the first place.

But mainly that night I dreamed about Jim. My subconscious mind went through a thousand scenarios about what he would do when he found out I had just seduced him all along. Sometimes he blamed me for the seduction, sometimes he knew it wasn’t my fault, but every time, his ultimate decision was to leave me. And every time I knew he was making the right choice, but my heart was breaking anyway.

I had, apparently, been crying in my sleep, because when I finally woke, a gentle large thumb was wiping away the moisture from the bridge of my nose.

“God, Lucy, don’t you dare ever do that again,” he whispered to me.

I opened my eyes. Jim was lying in the bed next to me looking completely lost.

“Sage told me what she said to you. She’s wrong. She was wrong about so many things, I don’t even want to--”

I couldn’t help myself. Before he could say another word, I reached over, and pulled myself on top of him to cry into his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know what to do.”

Jim held me for a few moments and then put his hand on the back of my head. It was one of the most reassuring things he did for me. “You don’t have to fix anything. And you don’t have to do anything. Just let me worry about it, okay?” I nodded into his shoulder.

“You know I heal faster than anyone. My own mutant ability makes it so that I can’t even get the sniffles, let alone be contaminated by whatever it is your gene is supposed to have done to me.” What he said made perfect sense. “And you know I drew up that marriage certificate before I even kissed you. That should tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like maybe I was in love with you all the way back then. Maybe before it was even appropriate for me to be in love with you.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and let out a long sigh. “I should have thought of that.”

“Well, there’s a reason you didn’t. Which comes to the point of what’s wrong with you.” Jim rolled me onto my side so he could see me better. He pushed my hair out of my face and smiled. “Are you ready for your prognosis? ‘Cause you’re going to be suffering from it until the end of September, is my best guess.”


	27. In Another Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter returns and brings in another expert. The others come clean and tell Lucy everything they know about the creature, and their world.

“How did you get in the motel room?” I asked Jim on our drive back to Peace River. We had dropped the rental car off at the High Level branch, and were almost down to the Buffalo Head Prairie turnoff.

“I showed them my badge. Told ‘em it was an emergency.” He slowed to allow a tanker to pass. “And I wasn’t lyin’.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I reached over and took his hand. “Everyone back home probably thinks I’m an idiot.”

“No, they don’t. They were all worried sick about you. Then when Sage told us what happened? Well, let’s just say she’s not the favorite of any one of us right now.” He took his hand away from mine and put it back on the steering wheel.

“It isn’t her fault. She just told me what she found and…”

“And told you that I only felt this way about you because you contaminated me? No, darlin’ I think she can take some of the blame there.”

Most of the time, he would drive faster when he was upset. But today, he was crawling along just under the speed limit, letting everyone pass him by. I didn’t know if this was because he was so angry he didn’t trust himself driving too fast, and therefore was overcompensating, or if he was trying to make the trip home last as long as he could as a kind of punishment for me.

“Are you angry?” I finally asked after several minutes.

“With you? No.”

He wasn’t even looking at me. Usually when we were driving somewhere, he’d steal glimpses of me every few minutes. But in this car ride, everything felt wrong. He wasn’t looking at me, he wouldn’t let me hold his hand, he was driving like an old man on Sunday morning, and he scarcely had two words to say without me constantly poking and prodding him.

I leaned my head against the car door and started drawing in the steam on the window.

He did lean over at that point, and lock my door for me. The car swerved a little, he cursed up a storm, and went back to gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. I could have sworn I saw the tip of his claws under the skin, he was gripping it so tight.

“Do you want to pull over for a minute and cool down?” I asked, finally.

“Why?”

“You say you’re not angry, but everything about you says that you’re gonna explode. You won’t hold my hand, you’re driving like you’re afraid you might get in an accident, and you won’t even look at me. I don’t know what I can do to make it up to you, but I promise I won’t try to run away again.” I felt bad for having sent everyone into a panic. And most of all, I felt horrible for hurting Jim.

“I’m not… oh, hell. Just… just wait a minute, okay?” Jim took the next exit and pulled over in a gas station parking lot, put the car in park, and turned to me. He didn’t look angry. Well, he didn’t look any angrier than he always did.

“I’m sorry. I really am,” I told him.

“Look, I’m not angry with you. The roads are icy, the trucks are all going a hundred miles an hour around here, and as hard as I’m trying to concentrate on my driving, all I can think of is that so much of what my wife is going through could have been avoided if my friends and I had all been a lot more open about what’s been hap-- about everything.” He rubbed his forehead and then pinched his nose right between his eyes. “I can’t explain it very well, or I’d come clean with you right now. But all of this that’s happening is a lot weirder than you can imagine.”

“I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff.”

“Yeah, well this one will really take the cake. Just know that there’s no place and no life I’d rather have than this one I’ve got right now, okay? You remember when you were a kid, and I told you that somewhere, sometime, that ability of yours might save someone?”

“I never forgot those words.”

“I was talking about me. Oh, I didn’t know that at the time, but you saved me just as much as you saved Dennis Langley. Just as much as you saved Emilio Mendez.”

We just sat there for a few moments in the relative silence. The car engine was running, and we could hear the sound of traffic passing by.

“I’m pregnant?” I finally asked, not sure of what else to say. “You’re sure?”

“Oh, Sage was quite sure. Hormone levels through the roof, apparently.” Jim was smiling.

“And you’re happy?”

“I’m over the moon.” He slammed his head back on the headrest, then closed his eyes for a moment, and finally started staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know how to explain all of this to you. I really think it would be better if Hank did it. He’s better with words.”

“Something’s wrong, then? I mean, it’s bigger than you thought?”

He sat up and took a deep breath. “It’s bigger than we thought, it’s more complicated than we thought, and as much as I’d love to sit up here in the car and talk to you all day about what’s going on, nothing will make any sense to you if we don’t go back and get Hank to explain everything.”

“Okay.”

He leaned over and kissed me, putting his hand on my cheek. “Just remember that I love you and I’m gonna make sure we don’t have to be apart again, okay?”

I smiled. “Okay.”

He started the car and got back on the main highway. We were still an hour and a half out of Peace River, so I took out my phone and started checking my messages.

I could feel the blood rush to my face. The ones from Kurt and Hank were bad enough, but then I started reading through all the text messages from Sage and Jim and even Jake. All these people were so worried about me. They cared about me so much.

Then I called my mom.

“How are you, honey? I was just thinking about you. Did Jim find you?”

“Yeah, mom. He found me. Did you tell him?”

“Well, I didn’t know where you were, but I told him you rented a car and you were safe at a motel somewhere. He’s in law enforcement. I figured he would have the resources to find you.”

“Thanks. Did he tell you anything else?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure I can guess. Can I tell Bradley and Carmen yet, or do you want to tell them?”

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for calling him. And for helping me last night.”

“Lucy, I’ll always be here for you. Whenever you need me.”

“Then, can you do something for me?”

“Sure. What do you want?”

I looked over at Jim and smiled. “Can you arrange a wedding that’s better than Bradley’s? And I want it up here in the woods. In April, so there’s still snow everywhere.”

My mother’s laughter rang out from the other end, and Jim smiled, and chuckled. “Better than Bradley’s? Oh, I’ll have to think about that one.”

Jim leaned over slightly. “Don’t worry about money, mom. Whatever you want to plan, I’ve got it covered.” He straightened up and started going a little faster. “I may not have a fortune, myself, but I have access to one if I need it.

That phone call, the car ride back to Peace River, and even my stupid attempt at running away was all just the calm before the storm, so to speak. Things had become far more complicated when we arrived back home. Sitting in our driveway was Peter’s unmistakable SUV. He had returned, and when the passenger-side door opened, we noticed he had brought someone with him. I wasn’t quite sure how to react to all of these people suddenly showing up in our little town, and Jim was just bristling, scowling when he saw the newcomer’s face.

“There you are. I wasn’t sure you two would ever be back,” the man told Jim.

“I’m sorry.” Peter came up to us and put his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I think he might be the best one to help us now. Especially since Dr. Richards is still in another dimension.”

“Well, hey, hey, the gang’s all here, right?” The newcomer looked at me and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You must be Lucy. Peter’s told me all about you. I’m--”

“I know who you are. I think everyone in the world knows who you are, Mr. Stark.”

 

Making good-bad lists always helps me calm down. I’ve always found that when I write down all the good and bad about a situation, or person, it makes it so much easier to deal with. The longer the list, the more complicated the problem, and the longer I probably need to think about my reaction.

Tony Stark is the embodiment of a good-bad list. And his list could run all the way from here to Calgary in ten-point font.

He’s brilliant, and arrogant, wealthy and juvenile, an absolute genius who knows just how smart he is and wants to make sure the rest of the world knows, as well. He’s a hero who showcases his heroism and donates a wing of the Smithsonian to himself and his friends. He is generous, and has millions of loyal followers who all think he’s the most incredible person in the universe. But nobody is as big a fan of Tony Stark as Tony Stark’s media team.

Which left me with a very confused first impression. All I had known about him was what was delivered through the regular news and that email newsletter I received every now and then on the status of the Hero world.

Was he arrogant? Yes. Was he self-centered and self-serving? Not as much as I thought he would be based on what I’d heard. But then, when he went into our tiny little house with its peeling wallpaper in the hall, and the chipped and mismatched paint, he sighed and relaxed and smiled. “This is really nice,” he told me.  Now, I know he’d been coached on how to seem genuine, but Mr. Stark really did seem to feel at home there. Jim motioned for him to sit in the chair by the fireplace and brought him a beer.

I went upstairs to change clothes and pack an overnight bag. By the time I came back down, Jim was smiling and chatting with his old friend. It was as if the public image of Tony Stark from Stark Industries didn’t really exist anymore, and it was just another guy who had lived through the same stuff Jim had.

“Logan tells me you’ve got the mutant gene, too. But that you’re also a nurse and lifesaver and can bring people back from the dead.” Mr. Stark put his nearly-empty beer on the coffee table and sat forward in the chair. “That’s something I’ve never had a knack for.”

“I don’t really bring people back from the dead. I’m a nurse. My purpose in life is to make people feel as good as possible during the worst kinds of situations.” Jim came over and took my bag, then ushered me to sit down.

“That’s incredible,” Mr. Stark told me. “If this world had more people like you and fewer people like me, there wouldn’t be any need for us.” He pointed around the room.

“You make a lot of people feel better, Mr. Stark. You make people feel safer, you give them hope, and you’ve got a face that people can look at and say ‘y’know, maybe it’s bad, but at least there’s this guy out there trying to make things better.’ I think that’s pretty important, too.”

Jim sat on the arm of the sofa and kissed the top of my head.

“I’m what my mom used to call a “Pollyanna.” I tend to view even the worst parts of life with a kind of optimism and hope.”

Mr. Stark sat back in the chair and crossed his legs. He just stared at me for a few moments, then looked up at Jim and smiled. “This,” he said, pointing back and forth between the two of us. “This is nice. This is perfect. You two.” He cleared his throat. “Alright, so why am I here? I’ve heard bits and pieces about some abominable snowman, only made of dry ice or space stuff or something. And you guys want me to come and review some video?”

 

We drove down to the House of Blue in Peter’s SUV. The roads were icy, and although no snow was forecast, there was enough from the last storm that was still drifting to make it even more slippery. When we got there, Peter and Mr. Stark went up first while Jim and I got my things out of the back.

“Hopefully, when we get up there, people will be so excited to see Mr. Stark, that they’ll forget about my stupid little stunt.”

Jim put his hand on the small of my back. “It wasn’t stupid. Nobody thinks you were being stupid. If anything, you were being hormonal and reacting in the only way you could think of.”

When we opened the door, all attention was on Tony Stark. He really did command the room everywhere he went. Hank and Sage were talking to him, and Kurt had just handed him a coffee mug. Ororo was standing by the window looking out at the town.

But a few seconds later, much to my own dismay, all attention was on me.

“Lucy!” Sage ran over to me and took my hands. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you would react like that. I am completely at fault for not taking into account Logan’s healing factor’s reaction to your--”

“Are you okay?” Kurt interrupted. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so concerned. “We should really stop playing those ethics games about possible scenarios. Especially when--”

“Blame it on hormones,” Hank told Kurt, patting him on the back. “She’s producing enough for a lifetime right now.”

“Hormones, producing?” Peter went up to Jim with a huge smile on his face, then pointed at me. “She is with child?”

Tony went over to the window near Ororo and crossed his arms. “How’ve you been?” he asked.

“Worried,” she told him.

“About the thing up there in the mountains?”

Ororo nodded. “And other things. We really should talk, Tony.”

I got away from the crowd and pulled Jim with me over near the window, then I brought up the video on my phone and handed it to Mr. Stark.

Mr. Stark ran through the video almost in a play-by-play fashion. “That’s Daken. That thing he’s fighting, it looks like something I’ve seen before.”

“Yes.” Ororo crossed her arms and looked over his shoulder at the video.

“And no matter what he does, it has no effect.”

“Yes, see how there’s steam coming up from his skin when the chips of ice fall on him?”

Mr. Stark pursed his lips and shook his head. “This shouldn’t be here. Not in this universe. Not in this realm.”

Jim’s grip on my hand tightened.

Mr. Stark held my phone up. “Do you mind if I send myself a copy of this?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer before I heard his own phone beep, and he handed mine back to me. The social man, the conversationalist who could dominate a room was gone and it was as if he just snapped into working mode.

He took his phone out from his inside jacket pocket and sat in the chair. He turned it sideways, pushed two buttons on the sides, and it expanded to the size of a tablet PC with a holographic screen on the top.

Stark’s fingers flicked across the tiny keyboard, running a program that could, apparently, take the video I shot, eliminate the background and create a 3D image of just the creature and Daken in the middle of the fight. He could easily turn the image around, looking at it from all angles.

“I’ve seen this before. I know I have.”  He pulled out another tablet and started running through a database of images.

Jim brought me over to the sofa and had me sit down. “I’ll get you some tea.”

Sage pulled a chair up near Stark and brought out her own research. “I’ve run it through our database, as well.”

“Yeah, I’ve got that one on here, too,” he told her, concentrating on the images flashing before him.

“How did you get that?”

Stark smiled. “I know a guy.”

  


It was late at night when everything had calmed down in the apartment. Jim, Sage, Hank, and Ororo went into the lab to study the creature. Which left the four of us in the living room to discuss some really tough subjects.

Now, I have always hated these kinds of conversations. It isn’t that I don’t like learning about things, but when people start telling me about things that they’ve kept from me all along it”s different. I had known that I was being kept in the dark for a while now, and I really did want to know all the things everyone else knew.

But, then Jim moved.

He walked over to the window and stared out at the town. There was no reassuring hand on my head, no warmth next to me on the sofa, just everyone looking away as if they didn’t want to do what they were about to do, all of them weighing the situation, trying to think of what to say.

I sat back and crossed my legs, then draped one arm over the arm of the sofa. “Okay, let’s play twenty questions. I’ll ask questions, and you guys answer me in turn.”

Kurt bit his lip. I looked over at Jim. He nodded.

“Okay, first question: How long have you all known this thing was out there?”

“About a year now,” Peter told me. “Confirmed for about a year, perhaps longer, though.”

“A year. Okay, so before I even left St. Theresa’s. So, it was by pure chance that I came up here? Or did somebody, as Mr. Stark said, know a guy who knew someone who could give me a job offer?”

“I’d planned it out with Matt. I was just waiting for you to leave your other job.” Jim was still staring out the window as he spoke, but I could see his eyes close in his reflection on the glass. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, and he looked as if he had been struggling inwardly over this for a long time.

“What would have happened if I never left St. Theresa’s?” I asked him.

“Then you would be safe. And I was okay to live with that, too. You might not have been happy, but you were content and safe, and that’s pretty rare in our world.”

Kurt looked incredibly sad. Almost like he was hearing some tragic story that had no possible happy ending. “He already loved you. We all must ask ourselves sometimes which is the more compassionate solution, and sometimes the hardest decision, is to choose the selfish one.”

I got up and went over to Jim. His eyes were still closed, his arms were at his sides, but he turned one hand toward me. I took it and leaned against his back. “No matter the circumstances, I’m happier now than I ever have been. It’s okay.”

“No it isn’t,” he told me quietly. “I took you out of that world of normal humans with a normal life and normal worries, and I brought you into this one.”

I put my arm on his shoulder. “I went from having one friend to having a townful of friends. No matter what else happens, this life you’ve given to me is better than what I had.” I kissed the back of his neck and went back to sit on the sofa. “How bad is it? The thing up in the mountains?”

“It’s very bad,” Kurt said. “And there’s something else that Hank could probably explain better. There are a lot of different worlds out there, and a lot of different realms and different realities.”

“Are you talking about alien races or alternate universes?” These were things I had read about in that hero e-newsletter I had been getting.

“You know about them?” Jim turned to look at me.

“I read about them in a newsletter I get sometimes. It explained about how there are different versions of us - an infinite number of them - one for each possible choice we may have taken. I think about it a lot. Like what would have happened if my mom was the one who went to take me to my appointment that day instead of my dad. Would she have been killed in the accident instead? Or would she have survived ‘cause she’s shorter, and maybe…”

I realized I hadn’t talked much about what had happened to me in the past. I hadn’t even told Jim about my dad and the accident that killed him. “Anyway, so, that thing is from another one?”

Peter took a deep breath. “It is, but also, we are. Not a month before you came to the school, something terrible happened in our world.”

“Incursion,” Kurt whispered.

“Our world collided with a mirror of itself, and many of us ended up here,” Jim told me.

“Is there another version of you running around here somewhere, then?” I asked.

“No, it does not work that way. According to Dr. Richards, we are sent to another world where we have never existed. It’s some way of balancing out the power in the universe.” Peter took a deep breath. “We have found twenty of our comrades so far, and we hope to find more.”

“Daken?” I asked.

“Is one of us.” Jim moved away from the window and came to stand next to me. “I think that’s part of what changed him.”

“And that creature came across as well? No wonder it was in a panic. Just like an animal that has been ripped out of its home,” I thought for a moment. “Tony Stark! He has been here longer, though. Stark Industries was around when I was born.

“That’s this world’s Tony Stark,” Kurt explained. “And he was a brilliant scientist on our world, as well. But there, he was better known as “Iron Man.” I haven’t decided yet if I like him better with or without his alter ego.”

My brain started putting all of these pieces together. “Wait, you didn’t know what that creature was. And if it came through during one of these worlds-colliding things, then that means more than one world crashed, right?”

Kurt nodded solemnly. “The collapse was indescribably large. As far as we can figure, at least a dozen timelines and realities must have collided. We’re not even sure if we are all from the same one.”

So many thoughts raced through my head. I didn’t know which ones needed to be voiced and which needed to be filed away for later. But there was one more question that I had to ask. I took Jim’s hand and pulled him down to sit in front of me on the coffee table. “Did you know Lucy on your world?”

His face softened, and he slowly nodded. “The other you? She wasn’t as healthy as you are. She was thin and in kind of bad shape. She didn’t have a mom. Or a brother. She had a dad who loved her, though.” *(see note)

“But something happened to her.” I offered. He nodded.

“Lots of bad things happened. She was kidnapped, then she ran away from her kidnappers. That’s when I met her. But they came after her, and I couldn’t save her.” He took my hands in his and gave them a squeeze.

“And you’re sure I’m the same Lucy? I mean, maybe I’m a totally different girl?”

“Your dad’s name was Braddock. The other Lucy kept a journal, and her writing was just like yours in that zipper-man book.”

I’d never told him my dad’s last name. Or even the fact that my mother kept her maiden name when she married. “Was she a mutant?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know her long enough.” My pulse quickened, and I could tell he could feel it through my hands. His eyes widened. “So when I saw you for the first time at the professor’s school, I was overjoyed that you had such a good life in this world. And I promised myself I would protect you and make sure you would never suffer that other Lucy’s fate.”

 

* * *

*Lucy Braddock: Wolverine #1, 2003.


	28. Creatures in the Archive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy tells her friends about her strained relationship with her brother and why she wants to show him up at her wedding. She also has a heart-to-heart with Dr. Green.

“Eureka!” Stark shouted as he pushed the lab door open wide. I had been sleeping with my head in Jim’s lap as he and Peter played cribbage. I opened one eye and looked over at our newest Ally. “I’ve found it!” Stark had a shit-eating grin on his face as he scratched his goatee. “Or at least I’ve found out what it is and where it’s from. Which is great news on one hand, and pretty terrible on the other. I mean, we can’t kill the thing, and I’m pretty sure at this point we can’t get rid of it, and send it back from whence it came. But at least we can put a name to that ugly face.”

Hank came into the room and slapped Stark on the back as he walked past. “Congratulations, my friend, you’ve discovered that this unbreakable creature cannot be defeated, and have destroyed the hope of everyone in the room in one breath. Good job.”

“I thought it was kind of beautiful,” I groaned, then closed my eyes again, “not ugly.”

Stark came into the living room, moved my feet and sat on the end of the sofa. “So, what I want to know is this: Was there anyone on your world, who might have come here with you, who would know how to lead a creature of this size and power out of our realm and away to another one? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure the one person who could have done it on our world died about a thousand years ago. Or at least the legends of him died a thousand years ago.” Stark put my feet up on his lap. “He might have died a few thousand years before that.”

“I’ve got fifteen two, four, six, and three of a kind is twelve,” Jim told Peter as he pegged his points. He looked over at Stark and scowled. “What are you doing with my wife’s feet, there, bub?” Jim pulled me fully up into his lap.

“Share the wealth, man. This sofa’s here for everyone, right?” Stark told him cheerfully.

I was still a little groggy from sleeping, and rested my head next to Jim’s neck. That made him smile. “Hey, Mr. Stark, you wanna come to our wedding? I need to show up my brother whose father-in-law spent about a hundred-thousand on theirs, including bringing in master sushi chefs from Japan and a full orchestra for the cathedral.”

Jim tapped my head. “Why do you have to show him up?”

“Reasons,” I grumbled.

“Fess up,” Stark told me. He snapped his fingers. “Give me your elevator pitch. Why should your wedding be better than your brothers?”

For my story, which I really hadn’t planned to share, I sat up. As I sat there, I thought about our discussion form before. Jim was still unsure about his decision to bring me up here and away from the “normal” world as he called it, and I thought that maybe my story would not only remind him just what that “normal” world was actually like, but might make him feel better about his decision to pull me out of it.

“I need to have it better than my brother’s because he made me sit in a special section at his wedding. I was segregated, with a few members of his wife’s family, into the back of the cathedral, the back of the reception hall, and away from the family tables. I’m his sister, and I sat with a few distant relatives on his wife’s side that they didn’t even really know, but were obligated to invite because of some Maggia tradition or something. But we all had to sit in the designated mutant area.” The whole room went quiet. “Oh, you didn’t know that there’s a big prejudice against mutants in this world?”

“We know,” Kurt said softly.

“Well, if you’re not super-powerful, you’re treated differently. For you guys? People are afraid of you, so they kind of leave you alone,. It’s only the most powerful who come after you, and there aren’t that many of them. But for the rest of us, who have no real power at all, we’re just shunned, ignored, tucked away, and treated like lesser humans. There’s no job security. There are very few laws protecting us, and even if someone broke the law, there are no lawyers who would defend us in court. Public defenders have the right to turn down any mutant.”

I sighed. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to go at all. At first, he didn’t invite me, but then mom insisted. She thought they could work something out, and she even volunteered to sit with me instead of being in the front row on the groom’s side with my Uncle Dan and my cousins.”

The room was far too silent. Ororo stepped in and just stayed at the door by the lab. “Whatever. It was a shit move. Bradley’s kind of spineless when it comes to these sorts of things, and he’s always resented everything our family had to do because of my stupid little mutant gene. He had been hoping that I’d join your school back then, so he wouldn’t have to see me again.”

I pushed myself out of Jim’s lap. “There’s my elevator pitch. Full of ‘the world is shit’ and ‘sucks to be me,’ but I’ve always dreamed of having a wedding with lots of mutant friends around, and plopping him and his mutophobic wife in the middle of them to sweat it out.”

I headed toward the kitchen. “I’m making some coffee. Anybody want some?”

“Decaf is on the top shelf,” Kurt told me. “Decaf.”

“Right. Pregnant.” I went into the kitchen, made some decaf coffee, and poured myself a cup. My brother was a little shit. Still is. And at that time his kids were a couple of brats who were being raised to be just as mutophobic as the rest of his in-laws. But part of me didn’t blame him for it. His life sucked because of me. No, I didn’t wish for this, and no, it wasn’t my fault, but he had to leave his best friends behind twice because of my mutant power. We went without medical and dental insurance for six years because nobody would cover a family with an M-positive kid, and that meant all extra money had to go into our medical buffer account instead of toward Disneyland vacations and Boy Scout trips. And there were so many times when mom had to be missing from his soccer games or baseball practice or piano recitals because something had happened to me.

I drank my coffee in the kitchen, just standing there, then I poured myself another cup. Kurt came in and got his own mug down from the cupboard, then poured himself some coffee and leaned against the refrigerator. “Logan just called your mom. He and Tony have her on speaker-phone, and they’re starting to plan.”

“What?”

“Don’t go in there just yet. I think they want to surprise you.” He put his tail on my arm and smiled, showing off his brilliant white fangs. “That part about your brother? I just wanted to say that a lot of us have been rejected by our families. And it’s a terrible feeling, but the way you’re dealing with it is pretty much the best possible solution.” Kurt sipped his coffee.

“God approves?” I asked, leaning against the counter.

“Well, I approve, and I think had our Lord been faced with the same circumstances, he might have been inclined to invite his wayward siblings to his dinner table, with all of his prostitute, thief, and leper friends. We can always hope that things will turn around. Hope that your brother will see you as a person and not a freak, hope that the world will see us as souls and not threats, sometimes that’s all we have to hold onto, even if it seems like it’s a completely lost cause.”

“Wait till the darkness is over, Wait till the tempest is done, Hope for the sunshine tomorrow, After the shower is gone.” I stared down into my coffee. “My favorite song when I was a kid. Still is. Well, that and Grapefruit Moon by Tom Waits.”

“We had that song in our world, too. Whispering Hope. It’s an anthem for all of us who have seen the despair in the world and stood steadfast against it,” Kurt nodded. He patted me on the shoulder. “I’m going back in there. Take your time.”

“Wait,” I said, “what about the creature? Is there really nothing we can do?”

Kurt chuckled. “There might be. But for now, all we can do is hope.”

“One more question, and I know this doesn’t have anything to do with anything we’ve talked about, but still...”

“What is it?”

“In your other world, the one that collapsed or collided, or whatever it did. Did Jim have... did he have a good life?”

Kurt’s eyes were sad, and then comforting, hopeful. “No. He didn’t have a good life. This is the best his life has ever been.”

 

We did go home that night, but I didn’t sleep well at all. I was resolved to go back to work the next day, and Jim would be on call all week. There were questions I needed to ask, and to ask them, I needed to be there during the day.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured Jim as he pulled into the clinic parking lot. I leaned over and gave him a kiss. “I’m just coming in for a half a day, and I’ll call if they want me to stay past four, alright?”

“Don’t forget to tell them you quit,” he joked.

“No way! You get to keep your job, I get to keep mine. When you retire, I’ll retire.”

“I’ve already retired from more jobs than you can count.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been fired from as many as you’ve retired from, so let me at least try to keep this one for a while, okay?”

“Fine, go. Tell Matt I said hello.”

I got out of the car. “I love you.”

I watched him drive away before I went inside. Which was probably a good thing considering how my reception made a part of me want to run away again.

“Lucy! I wasn’t expecting you in until tonight!” Clara was our new receptionist, and one of the friendlier people in town. I didn’t know her well, but she was the sort of person whom everyone knew and who knew everyone. “Are you here to collect your things?”

I took off my coat, revealing my new blue and white snowflake scrubs. “No, I’m here to work.”

“Oh, well, I think we don’t need you here today,” she told me sweetly.

I smiled, then went up to the door, punched in my code and went inside. “And that’s for you to decide now, is it?” I mumbled as I walked inside.

Dr. Green was standing at the counter near the lab. I looked over at him, pursed my lips and tilted my head. “May I talk to you, Dr. Green?”

“Aah, yes. Come to my office.” We went inside, and he turned on the white noise machine as usual, then sat down at his desk. I remained standing.

“I got half the story from Jim - Logan. I want to hear the other half from you. Jim doesn’t want me to find out who leaked the information that I was a mutant. He told me that it was his job to investigate.” I crossed my arms. “I have an amazing memory. You and Jim were in the army together. That means one of two things. Either you weren’t ever in the army with him, or you’re a mutant, too.”

Dr. Green sighed. He motioned for me to sit, and this time I did. “It’s pretty complicated.”

“More complicated than multiple universes crashing into each other, falling apart, and some of you ending up in a different universe and timeline?”

“He told you about that, too?”

“He told me almost everything. There are just two things I want to know. First, who are you and what are you doing here? Second, why did you leave my chart open and let people know I had a mutant gene?”

“I’m a little like him. I was in a different army with a different Logan a very long time ago. So in some respects, I didn’t lie to you, but in other ways, I guess it was misleading. That used to be what I did best. But when I came here, the powers that I had in the other universe were gone. This world doesn’t know anything about who I used to be. I changed my name, changed my profession, and tried my best to keep what I am a secret.”

“You’re also a mutant.”

Dr. Green shook his head.

“No, in that other world, I was a god.”

“That’s why I never detected another mutant around me until I started working the night shift with Jake. So your god powers don’t work here?”

“No. They don’t. There are legends of us, but that’s all they are in this world. Myself, my family, and everyone in all of the realms that I knew were all just legends.” He sat back in his chair and smiled as if he was recalling fond memories. “It’s funny that I, of all people, would be sent to a world where I never existed, and yet people still tell stories and name their dogs after me.”

I felt much less angry with Dr. Green. He’d been a victim in this whole scenario, as well, and I ought to have asked his story before making assumptions about his intentions. “Would I recognize your real name?”

Dr. Green’s eyes flashed as he smiled at me. “If you have even a rudimentary knowledge of myth and folklore, then yes, you would.”

“But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “So, my second question, why did you let the others know I was a mutant?”

“Because this town is in a very strange predicament.” I had heard those words before. “They’re on the verge of a social breakthrough. We have some who try to ignore the existence of mutants, some who welcome them and their powers as assets to this human race, there are some who are calling for a mutant genocide. And lurking in the background is a force that none of them can understand.”

“The thing that attacked Mr. Sorensen and the others.”

“Yes, and there are likely more, as well. Back in my world, we would call a timeline like this “A Great Archive. It’s a place where there’s a convergence of different realities, almost as if the multiverses are trying to tuck away the ones they can’t find normal homes for.”

“So, this planet is sort of an archive planet?”

“We’re not talking in terms of planets. I’m talking about the universe and all of existence. There are things that don’t belong in here because there’s no place else they belong. Or at least, when the incursion happened, they didn’t have a place to go.”

“So they came here.”

“Yes. And other universes like this one.”

“But Jim and the others have been trying to figure out what that thing is and how to defeat it. If you know so much, why aren’t you helping them?”

“This is more than two questions, Lucy.” Dr. Green got up from his seat and took off his glasses. It was the first time I noticed that the lenses were just glass - there was correction in them. “I’m not helping them because the only one who knows who I am, and that I’m even here, is Logan. It would be wise if the others were not informed of my presence. Another me has had some run-ins with them before, and they weren’t very pretty. I wasn’t entirely a great guy where they’re from. Come to think of it, I wasn’t a great guy where I’m from, either. This universe seems to have a pacifying effect on me.”

He motioned toward the door. “We should get to work, Mrs. Howlett.”

I got up from my chair and followed him over to the door. “Can I work days again?”

“You could have worked days before. It’s in your contract.”

“But you said that people would be uncomfortable around me.”

Dr. Green put his hand on the door handle. “And they will, but maybe it’s about time they just sucked it up and dealt with it. I’m putting you back onto my schedule. So, until that baby’s born, you’ll be under my watchful eye.”

“What? How did you know? Did Jim call you?”

“No, but you reek of hormones, and although I don’t have many of my powers, I seem to have a trick or two in this world.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

He scratched his head. “It’s a little embarrassing, especially for me. You seriously cannot tell anyone else this, alright?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“Well, it seems that since I used to be a god, and gods work differently in this world, sometimes I can hear prayers.”

“Whose prayer was it that I become pregnant? Was it my mom’s?”

Dr. Green smiled and shook his head. “I shouldn’t tell you, but it was a prayer of thanks.”

“Jim.”

“If you ever tell him, you’re in serious trouble. But he’s a pretty good sniffer dog. If he does find out, you can tell him paybacks are hell, and this is for me jumping through hoops to get your immigration paperwork pushed through.”

“So, I can tell him?” I smiled mischievously.

“Get out there and do your job!” He opened the door and shook his head. As I walked away, I heard him say softly, “I knew I liked you.”

 


	29. Community Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are four kinds of people when it comes to dealing with mutants. Lucy get some first-hand experience with all four.

There are four ways people treat those of us who have mutant genes. They either hate us for what we are and want us all destroyed, or at least out of their towns, or they ignore us and pretend the mutant gene doesn’t even exist, or they’re fascinated by us and think we’re the great solution to all of the human race’s problems, or they’re okay with us being who we are, and they are generally amused by all of the other types of people.

Jack Sorensen’s kids were definitely the last type.

I had been working the day shift for two weeks. I had settled into the daily routine of waking up, trying desperately not to vomit, giving up on that, running to the toilet, and spending ten minutes on the floor of the bathroom while Jim smoothed my hair back and ran the shower until we had hot water. Then we would shower together, get dressed, I’d eat a handful of soda crackers, drink some tea, and Jim would blow-dry my hair while I read my emails and the morning news.

Finally, around 8am, he would drive me into work, and he’d go down to the station to, as he once said to me “make paper airplanes until lunch time.”

The town was quiet. People had generally been accepting us a lot better than they had before. I think having a husband who could take an arrow to the head and a knife to the gut and walk it off had something to do with it.

I also think the Sorensen kids helped. They would come to the clinic after school and just hang around until I came out and got them caught up on what Jim was doing, how I was doing, what kinds of improvements Tony Stark was going to make to our car and our house, and could I get them a ride in one of his heli-jets.

“Where I’m from we called them quinjets,” Jim told the boys. They spun around, not having heard him come in.

We had been sitting in the lounge area. I got the boys some cocoa and was listening to them talk about their new video games. “Jim!” Kyle shouted. He held his hand up for a “high-five” and was not disappointed.

Jim came around the table, gave me a kiss, then stood behind me. “Whatcha doin?”

“Talkin’ about video games and stuff, and Tony Stark,” Louis told him.

“Mostly talking about Tony Stark,” I added. “Big name international celebrity comes to small town, Canada, he’s gonna make a few ripples with the elementary school.”

Jim took off his Stetson hat and plunked it on Kyle’s head, then pulled a chair up to straddle it next to me. “Can you get off work early tonight?”

“It’s been slow.” I shrugged. “We have a new intern, Dave, who’s doing a great job, so I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Why? What’s up?”

“Got a call earlier today, and as much as I hate to bring you out to anything work-related, I think I might need you for this one.”

Ever since the incident with the prejudiced paramedic, we all agreed that if there wasn’t obvious danger, and the case involved an injured or missing mutant, that I should come along with Jim and Travis just in case they needed my help. “I’m feeling fine this afternoon. Just still a little tired from this morning.”

“What happened this morning?” Louis asked.

Jim looked at him and pretended to vomit all over the table, making “blaaagh” sounds and pretending to dry heave.

“Ewww. And they make you go to work when you’re sick? If I puke, I gotta stay home from school,” Kyle told me.

“No, I’m not sick. My body’s just acting all weird ‘cause it’s growing a baby.”

Kyle and Louis both stood up and leaned on the table. “Really? Seriously?” they asked.

I moved back a little toward Jim, who was laughing under his breath. “Yeah, really and seriously.”

“So, is it going to be a mutant like you? I mean, will it be able to change the taste of things? Or does something different happen every time?” Kyle asked.

“Could end up being a mutant like its dad. How cool would that be. That kid could be the best hockey player in all of Canada if he doesn’t get hurt in a full body check,” Louis added.

“I don’t know if that’s how it works, boys,” I told them.

Jim scratched his head. “Well, my genes are pretty strong. So far, they’ve run pretty true to fashion when it comes to…”

I nudged him hard. We had agreed not to tell the town about Daken, both for his protection and for ours. “Does it matter?”

“Heck yeah!” Louis told me, sitting back in his chair again. “I mean, this town needs to be shaken up a bit. Some people really hate mutants, and they think it’s all dangerous and stuff. But the Olsen boys are the most dangerous kids in town, and they’re totally mutophobes. Never seen any mutant kids bust up mailboxes, or break windows in the school, or shove kids onto the hockey rink and lock the doors.”

“It would be really cool if you had one of those mutant super-abilities. You know, like that kid in New York who can climb up walls. Or there’s that girl in Toronto who can scream and break buildings and stuff.”

Jim looked up and stared at Kyle. “What did you say? Someone who can scream and break buildings? In Toronto?”

“Yeah, it was in the news. Someone said that they heard a girl scream, and then this building where some famous drug lord was hiding out just crumbled to the ground. Although it’s probably not real. You know, just people blaming bad construction on a mutant.”

“What is it?” I asked Jim.

“Just a ghost walking on my grave. But maybe I need to go talk to ‘Ro about this.”

I got up and picked up my purse, then went over to the row of lockers. “After we go find your missing person.” I put on my coat and turned to the boys. “Come on, kids, we’ll drop you off on our way out.”

“We get to ride in your car! It’s so cool. It’s, like, super old!” Kyle told Jim.

“Yeah, almost as old as I am.” Jim smiled and took back his hat.

We drove the kids home, went in to say hello to Jack and received an invitation to dinner on Sunday. Then, after a grateful hug and my promise that we would be there at noon, right on the dot, we left the farm and drove out toward the trailer park near the refinery.

“The kid’s name is Derek Lee. His brother called in the report, and it’s been 12 hours now since he was supposed to be home. The men he works with out in the fields say they haven’t seen him at all today, either.”

“And he’s a mutant?”

“That’s what his brother told us. Said both of them are, and some of the other guys don’t like them very much.”

It wasn’t one of the worst mobile home parks in the area, but certainly not a very nice one, either. Most of the homes were older models, smaller than a lot of the ones on the Southwest side of town, and many of them were shared by several men. There were a few of the streetlights that had burned out in one area, creating a lot of dark corners. The grounds were clean, and there was a small playground for any kids that may have eventually lived there. But everyone knew this place was owned and run by Paleoil. And the odds of any kids living in this park were slim to none.

As soon as we passed the main gate, I had a really bad feeling about the place. “I don’t like this,” I told Jim.

“What? Are you feeling sick again?” He stopped the car just inside the gate.

“No, I don’t like this. Something’s really wrong. There aren’t any mutants here but us, and it just feels really weird.”

“You’re sure it’s just us?”

“I’m positive. You and I and a faint heartbeat coming from my abdomen are the only mutant things in this entire area. Living or dead.”

He took a few moments to look at me, then look at my stomach, then back up at me again. Finally, he let out a long breath and nodded. “I’m gonna get out. You scoot over here and drive yourself down to the station. Tell Travis I need him and Levi out here quick as they can. And when you get to the station, go into Jackson’s office and stay there.”

I had long since given up on asking him any questions when he gave orders like that. He took off his beloved hat and threw it in the back seat, then did the same with his coat. “Be quick now. But not too quick. You’ve got some precious cargo with you.” He leaned over and kissed me, then got out of the car, locking the door before he shut it.

I did exactly as he instructed. As I turned the car around and drove out of the trailer park, I was sure I heard someone yell “he’s here, boys!” My heart was racing, I was worried stiff, and I don’t even remember driving to the station, but when I got there, and Travis saw the state I was in, it didn’t take him long to act. He and Levi checked out two shotguns in addition to their pistols, and headed out with the sirens blaring.

Jackson sat me down in his office and handed me a cup of cocoa. “We don’t have decaf coffee,” he apologized. I just nodded. He sat down at his desk and moved his laptop out of the way so he could see me. “Your husband, Mrs. Howlett, will be just fine.”

“I know.” I set the mug of cocoa on his desk, afraid I’d spill some of it if my hands kept trembling the way they were. “It was a trap.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

I looked up at him. “I said, it was a trap. He was just supposed to be looking for some kid named Derek, but when we got there, it wasn’t right.”

“Tell me what wasn’t right about it,” Jackson looked very concerned.

“Several of the streetlights were out, even though it’s 7:30 and completely dark, only a few of the homes had their lights on.” I took a sip of the cocoa and put the mug back on the desk. “And when I drove away, someone shouted ‘he’s here, boys.’ I could hear him over the sound of the engine, so I know.”

Jackson got up, went to the door of his office, and yelled at Morris to call out two more units to the Spruce Prairie mobile home park. “Mrs. Howlett, are you alright? Do you want a blanket or something?”

I shook my head. “I’m alright. Jim will be alright. And I’m pretty sure that when Travis and Levi get there, the fight will be all but over.”

“But you’re still shaking.”

“I’m angry and sad and frustrated at the situation. Who would hate someone so much - a complete stranger, at that - that they would go to all the trouble of luring him out into the middle of nowhere just to inflict pain, or maybe try to kill him. I don’t know what they wanted to do.”

Jackson sat on his desk in front of me. “People fear what they don’t understand. And they don’t understand how he doesn’t get hurt.”

“He gets hurt. It hurts him. Every time he’s cut or stabbed or shot or gutted, he feels every bit of it. He just heals really fast.” I looked up at Jackson. “So fast that it’s like a zipper sometimes.”

“That’s your fear, then. That he’ll get hurt?”

Jackson was fishing for something. I wasn’t biting. Instead, I nodded, then buried my face in my hands. I didn’t know what anyone wanted from us these days, but I did know I just wanted to go home, and I wasn’t going home without Jim.

I waited for nearly an hour. Jackson had turned on the hockey game. The Flames weren’t playing that night, but there was a lot of excitement when the Maple Leafs beat the Blackhawks in overtime.

The whole time the game was going, I was watching the door.

It was just about 8:30 when Travis came inside, ushering in four large men with their hands fastened behind their backs with zip ties. The men’s shirts and jeans were covered in blood, but it didn’t look as if they were injured much at all. One had a black eye, and another one had a huge bruise on his face and a swollen jaw.

Levi marched in two more, and started calling for help up front. The whole office sprang into action. Men were called in from their breaks, Jackson called in help from neighboring towns, and the whole time I stayed in his office, waiting.

Travis came in. “Come on, Lucy.”

I got up and followed Travis as he took me outside through the back door. Two men I didn’t recognize were standing at the back of Travis’s new Yukon - the one Hank had special-ordered to replace the one that had been totalled. “These are a couple of friends of mine. Well, cousins, actually. They understand a lot more about you two than the ones we just brought in.” Travis nodded to the back of the truck. “Go on.”

I was overly cautious, but then again, I had reason to be. I knew that I was always far too trusting of people. I looked in the back of the truck, and there was Jim, beaten, bloody, full of holes, one arm with the flesh ripped down to his bone. Well, it didn’t look like bone, it was silver and metallic. And he was sitting up with his back against the middle seats. I got up into the truck and sat down next to him. I reached up and held his muscles in place over the exposed bone, closing the wound as much as I could.

“We’ll leave you two alone,” Travis told me. He closed the on the back of his truck.

“This is going to take a while to heal, isn’t it?” I asked.

He put his hand over mine and leaned down to rest his head on my shoulder. “Probably until morning.”

I put my hand on his cheek and nuzzled his forehead. “Should have seen the other guy, right?”

“I’m not bringing you out with me anymore. Not until something changes in this town.”

“It wasn’t like this before. I don’t know why it’s suddenly so bad.” I kissed his forehead. “It’s all your blood, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“The claws still haven’t come out, have they?”

“No. I don’t really want anyone to know about that.”

“I think Jackson suspects. He was trying to get me to tell him what else you could do.”

“But you didn’t.” He shifted his weight over just a bit so that he could lean his head more comfortably on the back of the seat.

“No. I didn’t tell him what I could do, either.”

“You’re the best,” he told me. “That’s why I married you.” He closed his eyes. I could see that the bruises on his face were already starting to fade, and the bicep and tricep that I had held in place earlier, had begun to heal themselves around the bone. It was somewhat fascinating watching the blood vessels reach out and attach together again.

“Let’s get you home. Can you walk over to the Dodge with me?”

Jim looked down at his leg that had been slashed open with a knife still twisted in it in a very awkward position. He pulled out the knife, a long kitchen blade, and set it on the floor of the vehicle. “I can walk. But you drive. This arm’s gonna take a few more hours.”

We got out of the SUV and were escorted out to our car by Travis’s cousins. One of the men who had attacked Jim was sitting in one of the squad cars, waiting to be processed. He saw Jim hobbling toward our car. “That’s him! He won’t die! He won’t even get hurt! Son of a bitch! Can’t prosecute me for something that didn’t happen. You wait and see, tomorrow he’ll be fine, and you’ll have no case at all!”

Levi had just come out to get the last of their suspects when he heard the commotion. “We have photographs, we have DNA evidence smeared on and soaked into everyone’s clothes, we have some CCTV footage, and we have your testimony just now on our vehicle recorders. I’m pretty sure with all of that, you’ll have a nice, warm, and secure 10x10 room to stay in for the rest of the season.”

I helped Jim into the Dodge, then went around to the driver’s side. I waved to Levi, and then we headed home.

Jim was fine by morning. Which was a good thing, because my daily routine of waking, willing it not to happen, and then running to the toilet was right on schedule again. And even though the bathroom floor was covered in towels soaked in his blood, a bowl of buckshot and bullets, and the shreds of his clothes from the night before, he managed to find a clean cloth to wash my face as he smoothed back my hair.

“You’re not coming out with me again.”

“No kidding.”

After we showered, we went downstairs and I sat in my usual place on the sofa while he went into the kitchen and started making breakfast. Just as he announced he was finished making the pancakes, there was a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” Jim told me.

He looked outside, and then threw the door open. It was Peter, and he was carrying the very bloody and beaten body of Daken. “He’s hurt pretty bad. And he’s not healing the way he should.”

 


	30. Meet the AMS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A branch of an American anti-mutant group has sprung up in Peace River, and Jim isn't their only target.

There’s something that a lot of people just don’t understand about training for a job in emergency health care. When you’ve gone through all of the courses and certifications, and you’ve worked as an EMT and a Paramedic, you will always have a completely different reaction to someone who is in physical distress. What happens is that you’ve created instincts that take over, just as strong as any animal instincts, and no matter what condition you are in yourself, that other person takes priority every time.

It’s really hard to explain, but my reaction to Daken was a prime example. I was up and at the front door in a matter of seconds. I checked his eyes, his pulse, and examined his skin. His claws coming out of his wrists were stuck.“Upstairs in the spare room,” I told Peter, “Pull the bed out from the wall so I can go around on all sides. I’ll be right there.” He nodded and carried Daken upstairs. I turned to Jim. “Can you get me some hot water and clean towels, then call Jake and get him the speaker phone so I can talk to him?”

The men didn’t question my authority at all. They knew this was my area of expertise.

I grabbed my bag and followed Peter upstairs.

The first order of business was to carefully cut of Daken’s clothes. He was still conscious. That was a good sign in this case. He hadn’t gone into shock.

“Peter, ask him questions. Get him talking.”

“Who did this? Did you see them?” Peter asked.

Daken’s wounds were pretty bad, and they weren’t healing as quickly as they should. It reminded me of the time when I had found Jim in the construction trash.

“AMS. I recognized one of the guys from the refinery.” Daken’s voice was deep and his words were choppy. Possible partial lung collapse.

I checked his arms and back. There were small puncture marks, just like Jim’s.

“AMS is up here? This is such a small town.” Peter sounded genuinely surprised.

I cleaned out the wounds on his arms and chest and dressed them as well as I could.

“Yeah. I think they’re not from here. Mostly Americans who came up to work in the oil sands.”

I cut off his jeans There were more puncture marks on his legs.

“Daken,” I asked, “did they shoot you with dart guns?”

The antiseptic stung as I cleaned out a deep gash on his leg. I heard him hiss and one of the claws that had been stuck retracted. I continued cleaning out the worst of his wounds, and then I started stitching him up.

“Coat pocket. Picked up four of ‘em. There were dozens.”

“I’ve got Jake on the phone,” Jim announced as he came into the room.

“Jake, can you hear me okay?” I asked as I pulled the cap off of the IV needle.

“Yeah. I’m still at work, though, Clara called in sick, and until the day crew gets here, I’m the only one here, so I can’t talk for long. What do you need?”

“Is Dr. Green on call tonight?” I asked.

“Hold on, lemme check.” We heard muffled voiced as he talked to someone else. I gave the saline bag to Peter and told him to hold it. “Yeah, he’s on. Do you want me to ask him to make a house call?”

I couldn’t begin to explain what was going on to Jake. “Yeah, can you get a bag of ceftriaxone, two saline, staples, sutures, and a shock kit? Put it together, call Dr. Green, and see if he can bring it to me. And you just stay there. Something was attacking mutants last night, and there might be more coming in.”

“Really? Is Jim okay?”

“Jim and the others are alright. This is for Daken.”

“Shit,” Jake cursed. “Sorry.”

I had finished administering the IV, sewed up his leg, and checked for any other puncture wounds. “Cover him with that sheet and get me the electric blanket.”

Jim left and went into our bedroom as Peter covered Daken’s body with the sheet.

“You feel like crap, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Gonna throw up?” I asked.

“I might.”

“Yeah, we should get you into a shower, but not until you get some more fluid in you. Drink up that IV, and then we’ll get you cleaned. The doctor will hopefully be here before too long with two more that you’ll have to suck down.”

“Great.”

“Are you in pain? I can give you some painkillers to help with it?”

Jim came in with the electric blanket and plugged it in. “He’s in pain.” He covered him with the blanket, then put his hand on Daken’s forehead. Jim closed his eyes. “Nine, ten, eleven… Fifteen hours? Maybe more. Gonna take him a while to heal.”

“It’s a good thing I can’t move, old man, or I’d bite your hand off.”

“No you wouldn’t. And stop playing tough. I told you before, we don’t have the luxury of being enemies in this world.” Jim took a step back and sat on the stool by the wall. “We don’t have to be friends, and you can hate me all you want, but we got bigger battles to fight here.”

Daken looked over at me. “How can you stand him telling you what to do?”

“I don’t. So he doesn’t. If anything, I tell him what to do.” I gave him the codeine injection and started cleaning up my things.

“Nobody tells me what to do,” Daken grumbled.

“Daken, you’re talking about another life where everyone did tell you what to do. That’s gone,” Jim replied

“Think I don’t know that? It’s been 20 years.”

“Yeah, and you still haven’t let go of what happened in a completely different world. Now deal with it. You’re here. People care about you, and it’s embarrassing as hell. But you can’t do a damn thing about it.”

There was a knock on the door. Jim went to go answer it. After a short discussion of whether the doctor should go see the patient or not, Dr. Green agreed to come up and have a look at him.

“Here’s the rule, spud,” Jim told Daken as he came back into the room.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, bub, here’s the rule. You can’t tell anyone, and I’m being really serious now. He’s not the same as… well, as what we remember.”

When Dr. Green came into the room, Daken’s eyes widened, and he smiled. “Well, lookee here. Never thought I’d see you again.”

Dr. Green rolled his eyes. “You didn’t see me in the first place, Mr. Akihiro.”

I left the doctor to care for the patient, then brought Jim out into the hall. “Here,” I told him, handing him the darts I took from Daken’s coat pocket. “He picked these up. Maybe Hank and Sage can analyze what’s on ‘em. It feels a lot like whatever got you several years ago.”

“I’ll drive them over there this morning.”

“Wait,” I put my hand on his arm. “I think we should be more careful. Daken said that the AMS is up here.”

“Anti Mutant Society? What are those goons doing all the way up in Nowheresville, Alberta?”

“He said some of them were from the States. But if they’re spreading a propaganda campaign, they might be following you, or me. Probably us.”

Jim shook his head. “I’m not going to live my life in fear like this.”

“And you don’t want to get violent with them, either. So, there’s solution number three.”

“What’s that?” He asked.

“We have a party. You can give them the darts then.”

Jim raised an eyebrow.

I led him into our bedroom, and we sat down on the bed. “The way I see it, they know a lot about you. They know some things about me, but not a whole lot. They probably know Daken’s here, and if you go to the House of Blue many more times, they’ll probably put two and four together and get the potential for a nuclear holocaust. Jumping to conclusions is something that American hate groups do really well.”

Jim smiled.

“So, we’ll have a party here tomorrow night. That will give Daken some time to recover, and we can invite others, as well. Travis and his cousins, whoever’s not on duty at your work, Mr. Sorensen and the boys, Maria and her kids. It will be fun!”

“This is a pretty small place for all those people.”

“Okay, so we clear out the breezeway and garage, set up some space heaters in there, and use that space, too.” I stood, then held out my hand. “Shall we invite Mr. Stark and his heli-jet?”

“You mean quinnjet?” Jim asked, taking my hand. “Don’t you think that will draw just a little bit of attention?”

“That’s the point. The more people, the more attention, the better the cover. AMS can’t really accuse Tony Stark of being a mutant.”

As we came out of the bedroom, Dr. Green came out of the guest room. “My best guess is that he’s got at least on day of recovery, possibly longer. You say that his healing factor should be about the same as yours?” he asked Jim.

“Yeah. The same as mine.”

Dr. Green shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. Anyway, he should be fine. Lucy, do you want me to replenish your kit again?”

“Please, it’s really been a big help.”

“Yeah, well, I’m wondering if we shouldn’t give Jake one, too, just in case. Peter told me that AMS is in town. You guys better be careful, or Lucy’s likely to be a target.”

Dr. Green started down the stairs.

“What do you know about all that?” Jim asked, leaning over the railing.

“She’s pregnant. Mutant woman, pregnant with a mutant man’s baby? That’s not going to sit well with them, especially because of who you are, Logan. Now that they know they can’t take out their target, they’re going to look for the next best way to get you.” He looked over at me. “Stay here today. Make some chicken soup or do some cross stitch or watch some hockey. Just be as normal as you can. And that party idea? I think it’s great. I’ll be here and I’ll bring pie.”

Tony Stark did show up for the party, which was fine by me. I totally fail at hostessing. I always have, and I probably always will. I don’t think I had actually expected him to come, and  deep down, I didn’t really want him to if it meant putting all of us in more danger. But between his grand entrance, the spontaneous catering courtesy of his own snack food and beer factories, and the holographic screen TV he set up in the garage for watching the hockey game, he was the star of the show.

Kyle and Louis followed him around like a couple of ducklings. Everyone in town wanted to meet him and get his autograph, so even those who claimed to have had received an “invitation in passing” showed up with bright, friendly smiles and bowls of jello.

That gave me plenty of time to spend with my patient. Or at least the fifteen minutes allowed me to stand in the same room with him while he sulked.

“You don’t want to come down and join us?” I asked. He was sitting in the spare bedroom just staring out the window.

“Do you want me to bring you some food?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you want a beer?”

He looked at me. “You’re going to give your patient a beer?” he all but spat out the word “patient.”

“Yeah. You want one?”

There was a short pause as he just looked at me, as if he was trying to figure out if I was being genuine. “Yeah.”

I went downstairs and got a beer out of the cooler. “That’s not for you?” a voice growled from behind me. I turned around and kissed the source of the objection.

“Of course not. It’s for Daken. You want to take it to him? You’re more than welcome to.” I held it out to him.

“Nope. You’re much better with kids than I am.” He took a swig from his own beer bottle.

I poked him in the chest. “That had better not be true, daddy-o. Way I see it, you need more practice. Now take this and go talk to him. Invite him down to watch the game. Don’t take no for an answer.”

I shoved the beer into his hand and went into the kitchen. A few moments later, I could hear him going up the stairs.

Kurt came in to get something from the fridge. “What are you doing in here, Lucy? Shouldn’t you be out--”

“Shh.” I pointed up at the ceiling. “There’s a vent just here, and if you’re really quiet, we can hear them.” I wasn’t so much trying to listen in on their conversation, that would have been impossible with all of the noise from the party, but I did want to make sure I didn’t hear any bottles being smashed against the wall, no fighting, no sound of claws coming out.

“Logan and Daken are up there alone?” he asked. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I looked at Kurt and shrugged. “He’s gotta learn how to be a father sometime.”

He patted me on the arm and went back into the living room. From upstairs, I heard no smashing of bottles, no yelling, no “snikt” sound. A few minutes later, Jim came back down. I met him at the bottom of the stairs. He winked at me, and then went out into the breezeway. “We’re gonna catch the game on that big screen Stark’s got hooked up in the garage.”

About two minutes later, Daken came down. He had dressed in some of Jim’s clothes, and looked a lot more like his father than he probably wanted to. “Flames are playing. Can’t miss this one.” He went into the kitchen, grabbed another beer from the cooler, a bottle of bourbon from the top of the fridge, and four sandwiches from the table, then he headed out to the garage.

“Never thought I’d live to see the day,” Ororo told me. She came over from near the fireplace. “Those two have such a bad history together.”

“Yeah, well, they live in a different world now. I don’t know what it was like where you were from, but it seems like the mutants who live here have a different perspective.”

“I think it’s just us. Before the incursion, things were really bad. There was so much fighting amongst ourselves, and almost no consideration was given to the countless innocent souls who were caught in the crossfire. No matter how many I could evacuate, when a building fell, or a sentinel - a giant robot - was called, someone would be injured or killed.”

“You were at war when it happened?” I asked.

She picked up two cups of punch and handed one to me. “We were never at peace. Every day was a struggle, and every day, we didn’t know who would be next, what would come for us, and whether it would be from this planet, or from across the universe, or both.”

“I have another question. It’s about the professor and that school.”

“Yes, he came with us. In fact, starting the school was one of the first things he did here.”

“That’s not what I wanted to know. When I was there, it was really quiet. There weren’t many students, and I couldn’t really tell that there were many teachers, either. I know in our world, people try to hide their mutant genes. And if someone in the family has one, the family usually tries to hide it, as well. How would a school like that work, if the people who go there are all out in the open about what they can do?”

Ororo sighed. “Professor Xavier opened the school for children and young people who don’t have anywhere else to go. If their parents completely reject them for who and what they are, they can come to us. There are rumors going around that he’s trying to train a mutant army, but that’s not what we do. In my other home, that’s the way it ended up being run. Because there was so much violence and there were so many threats, we didn’t have a choice.”

“We always have a choice.”

She paused for a few moments.

“I’m sorry, go on.” I shook my head.

“No, you’re right. We do always have a choice. I think that’s why in this world, he runs the school more as an orphanage than a training ground.” She sipped her punch, then took mine away from me and set both of them down on the table. “Someone’s spiked it,” she told me. “So, what would you have done. I’m curious how a healer would have viewed this situation.

“I don’t know. I’ve never lived in such a hostile environment before. But, I did my internship at George Washington University Hospital, and these two men came in with gunshot wounds. One of them died before we could even get the bullets out, and the other one lived, but he was pretty severely disfigured and had lost the use of his left arm. Anyway, they started out just arguing, and then one guy punched the other. Then the other had to punch him back. Both men were covered in bruises, and then one pulled out a gun. Then the other pulled out a gun, and before they fell to the floor, each had shot an entire clip into the other man. The “he might kill me, therefore I must strike harder” approach never works.”

“That… still lacks a solution,” she pointed out.

“The solution is to give a five-year-old a history book and tell them that it’s the most important subject they can ever study in school. That way they will learn about all of the things that didn’t work. Violence, invasions, aggression, genocide. Reading, Math, and Science? They’re all important, but History and the Arts may be the most important of all.”

Ororo laughed. “The Arts? Why the Arts?”

“Because it teaches people how to channel their aggression into expression rather than explosion. That’s something my mom said when she was signing me up for dance lessons.”

I took a banana from the bowl of fruit on the table, and nodded toward the breezeway. “I’m gonna go watch the game with the boys. Want to come with me?”

She shook her head. “No, I think I’ll to talk to Jake. He’s been standing there on his own for a while now. He looks like he may need some company.”

“He says he likes to keep to himself and watch other people, but I think he’d be glad to have another friend.”

Everyone in and around Peace River can always tell you where they were when it happened. I was in the breezeway, banana in one hand, almost out to the garage when I heard the explosion, felt the ground shake, and ended up falling over onto our shelf where we kept all of our canned goods and extra pots and pans. They made a huge commotion as they fell down, drawing everyone in from both the garage and the house.

“Oh, God! Lucy, are you okay?” Mr. Sorensen had been standing right by the door. He rushed over, pushed the shelving upright again, and cleared a path for Jim, who came right to my side.

“What the heck was that?” I asked.

Jackson’s phone went off. Then Levi’s, Travis’s, Peterson’s, and Jim’s. Then Dr. Green’s pager beeped.

“There’s been an explosion up at the refinery,” Jackson told us. He tapped “call” on his phone. “I’m calling everyone in. Party’s over for us, boys.”

“Lucy, are you okay?” Jim asked, looking all over my head, shoulders, and the rest of me for any injuries.

“Yeah, just startled, that’s all. Go ahead and go.”

Daken stood in the doorway, just staring down at us for a moment. Then he huffed. “I’ll stay here tonight. Go on. I’m sure the others will stay here, too. We’ll be fine.”

Jim helped me up and back into the house. Jake and Dr. Green were putting on their coats, getting ready to leave. “Wait, I’ll come with you guys.”

“No, you’re staying here with me, and you’re gonna stay safe!” Daken insisted, taking my wrist.

I shook his hand away. “No, I’m not. You’re going to stay here with them and make sure everyone gets home safely. Drive ‘em home if you have to. Or better yet, let them crash in the living room. Who knows what the roads will be like tonight. I’m going to go into the clinic where we will likely have far more patients than our staff can cope with.” I started putting on my boots. Jackson came into the living room and made an announcement about what had happened. Mr. Stark offered his jet for transporting the injured to other nearby hospitals if needed, and the rest of our friends and townspeople started gathering their things.

Dr. Green was talking with Daken as I put on my coat.

“How can we trust you?” Daken asked.

“Because the rules of this world are different.”

“But you’re a… you’re you.”

“Yeah, and here someone like me is bound by another set of rules. Apparently, when someone like me takes an oath, it’s a binding pact.” Dr. Green wound his scarf around his neck and pulled on his black leather gloves. “That means when I held my hand up and announced that I would utterly reject harm and mischief, I’ve been bound by those words ever since.”

Daken smiled. “Seriously?”

Dr. Green scowled and pulled on his hat.

“Seriously? You can do no harm and mischief?”

“Come on, Lucy.” The good doctor took my arm. “You’re riding with me.”

When we were out in the driveway, Jim came over to me. “Jackson just got another call. Some guys from AMS are out there at the refinery right now, saying they want to talk to me. My guess is that they want to do more than just talk.”

I nodded, then hugged him. “Take care. Don’t give in, and just… come back to me.”

Jim kissed me by my ear. He didn’t say anything. I don’t know if it was because he didn’t know what to say, or he didn’t want to lie to me.

“Lucy will be fine with me,” Dr. Green told him.

“Yeah, I know that.” He waved at us, then went and joined the rest of the men, got into Travis’s SUV and drove off.

“He’ll be okay.”

“He will if he comes home,” I told my boss. “I just have a bad feeling that they might all be playing a very dangerous game.”

“Who, Jim and those guys?” he asked, pointing at the SUV turning off of our driveway and onto RR213.

“No, the AMS. They think they know what he can do. But tonight I learned that provoking him would be like a bunch of cobras poking fearlessly at a mongoose.”

“Not a bad analogy.”

“A mongoose with an Albertosaurus hidden in its pocket.”

“That is a much better analogy.”

****  
  



	31. The Ones Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's some bad news and some surprising news. And they come at about the same time.

The clinic felt like a hospital emergency room after a football game that broke into riots. We had more patients than we had beds, so the ones who suffered only minor injuries were treated out in the waiting room. Four staff, including Dr. Murphy and Jake went over to the hotel where they’d brought some of the men and citizens from the surrounding residential area who were only suffering from smoke inhalation. That’s where most of the firemen ended up, as well.

Most of the staff, however, were treating patients in the clinic. I had set aside my nursing hat for the night, and worked mainly in emergency care. At one point, there was a call that came in from the site of the explosion. Jackson sent a message that the total count was six dead, forty injured, and another twenty unaccounted for. That last number worried me a lot.

The nurses at the clinic worked in shifts. We would each work for three hours at a time, and then take a break for half an hour. It’s one thing to work for 8 hours in a regular clinic, seeing only a few patients at a time, but it’s much different when we were treating two dozen urgent cases in an hour, and caring for them, probably for several hours until transportation could be arranged for them to get to a regular hospital. And for those who were not critically injured, until they could find someone to help them at home.

I’d got used to doing this at various times in my career. That was both an advantage and a disadvantage. It meant that when an emergency like this happened, I knew what to do, and how to do it, but it also meant that I was often being pulled in three directions at once.

Actually, I was fine for the first few hours. Then I went on break, had some tea and snacked on some soda crackers, and started scrubbing up for my next three hour shift.

“We don’t need her here,” I heard a sugary-sweet voice say. “Didn’t you hear? The word is going around that it was that anti-mutant society what did this. You think they’re gonna be happy if we got a mutant treating regular, law-abiding citizens?”

“Would it be better if a mutant stood by and watched while those “law-abiding citizens,” as you put it, suffered?” I relaxed at the sound of Dr. Green’s voice, and continued getting ready for work. “Besides, some of those men aren’t Canadian citizens, and some of them aren’t law-abiding. I would say we needed a good nurse who can care for them more than a receptionist who comes to me with suggestions that aren’t only unethical and illogical, but illegal under the Commonwealth Mutant Protection Act of 2004.”

There was a long pause, and then I heard Clara take a deep breath. She just couldn’t leave well enough alone. “I was just sayin’ that we’ll be fine if she goes home. She probably doesn’t want to work while she’s pregnant, anyway. And I’ve heard she’s got Stark as her sugar-daddy, so it’s not like she--” Clara’s whisper wasn’t actually a whisper. I had a sneaking suspicion she knew I was just around the corner.

“Clara, you’ve been with us for two weeks. I think your trial period is over. After tonight, you can pack up your things and we will not be in need of your help anymore.”

I walked out of the scrub room and past the two of them in the hall. “Where do you need me?” I asked Dr. Green.

“Everywhere. Would you start with room four? Burns, lacerations, respiratory distress? And then start making rounds in the yellow rooms. They should all need an IV refresh. Thanks.”

Clara stormed off in the opposite direction of me as I headed out into the hallway again. I was smiling as I went into room four. Prejudice would not be tolerated under Dr. Green’s watch.

But my smile quickly faded as I went into the room to treat Doug Killian. He had been brought in, given some painkillers and a mild sedative, and was at least stable on the ventilator. The intake nurse had prepared his burns for treatment - cleaned off the excess fabric as much as possible, and then applied an anesthetic spray.

“You wife hasn’t arrived yet,” I told him as I prepped my burn kit. “I’m one of only three people here who have been trained to care for burns. The other two are Dr. Green, who is busy in our surgery, and Molly Koenig, who’s on vacation this week.”

His eyes opened, and I could see a flash of recognition in them.

“Don’t worry. Whatever you think of me, and of us, we’re not contagious, contrary to popular belief.”

The burns extended down his left side. They were mostly second and third-degree burns, but they covered, easily, a fifth of his skin. “This is going to take a while to treat, but I’ll talk you through the entire process if it makes you feel more at ease. We’re going to keep you on the fluids and respirator all night. I still have a few areas to clean out, and that’s going to hurt, but I’ll use antiseptic and anesthetic spray, so that will help a little. I’m sorry, we can’t give you anything stronger until you get some fluids in you.”

I heard him try to say something, but his breathing was still pretty shallow, so I leaned in closer.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “For… New Year’s... Eve.”

They were words I hadn’t expected to hear. Not from him, and not from anyone who had ever attacked me and my kind. But he did seem genuine. “Thank you. I accept your apology. Now, let’s get your looking a little better before the missus comes in with the kids.”

It was almost ten in the morning the next day when they could start thinking of sending people home. At the end of my last three-hour shift, I went into the lounge and nearly collapsed. I was exhausted, nauseous, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything but soda crackers and a few bites of applesauce since the party.

But more than food, I needed sleep. I set the alarm on my phone for twenty minutes, then put it on the table by the sofa. Then, I got a blanket from one of the overhead cupboards, took my coat out of my locker to use as a pillow, and stretched out on the sofa for a nap. A nap that was supposed to only last for twenty minutes.

“I really hate to steal her away like this.” At the time, I could have sworn I dreamed the voice.

“She’s a real trooper. She’s worked more than her share tonight, and on her day off, to boot.”

“Yeah. Well, I wish I could say I’m taking her home for some rest and a picnic.”

“You’re not taking her out with you again, are you?”

“O’ course not. I promised her that, and I promised myself that. No, it’s just that I’ve gotta tell her the news, and the news ain’t good.”

“Well, get her some food and make her drink some water first.”

I felt a hand on my forehead, and then a scratchy face lean down to kiss my cheek. “Come on, love. It’s time to go home.”

“What’s the bad news?” I asked, willing myself not to wake up.

“You were listening?”

“Yeah. What time is it?”

“Ten forty.”

“Awww… I overslept. I was supposed to be up an hour ago.” I pushed my sleepy body up, but then found myself just flopping over onto Jim’s arm. “I’m so sorry. Just really tired.”

“It’s alright,” Dr. Green told me. “I turned off your phone. You’ve worked enough overtime for one day. So get out of here so I can go home and get some sleep, too.”

Jim lifted me to sit up and helped me on with my coat. Then, as I was trying to wake up, he went over to my locker, slung my purse over his shoulder, and stuffed my gloves and scarf into his pockets. “The car’s running outside, so it should be warm,” he told me as he picked me up and carried me out of the lounge.

I didn’t fight him. There were a few funny comments and giggles as he carried me through the waiting room and out to the car, but I really didn’t care.

I did get into the car myself, fastened my seatbelt, and by that time, I was wide awake. “So, what’s the bad news? Is it Daken? He didn’t go out there, did he?”

“No, Daken’s at home. He’s pacing the floor. I think he went into a panic when I came home before you did.” He turned off of the main road onto RR213. “Travis is gone.”

“Gone? Like missing?”

“Gone like probably dead, but we can’t find him. So for now we’re saying he’s missing.”

At the time, I couldn’t understand why Jim would think he was dead if he was just missing, but I didn’t want to ask questions in the car while he was driving. I waited until we got home to let him tell the story.

“Would you mind telling me about it in bed?” I asked once we stepped inside the door. I took off my coat and hung it up on the peg, then kicked off my boots. “I feel sick,” I told him, and then headed upstairs for the bathroom. Daken was up there, and stood in the doorway as I heaved into the toilet.

“Welcome to our morning routine,” Jim told him, then he came over and put his hand on my back.

“Every morning? That’s gross.”

“Yeah, well, I can tell you it looks a lot worse from my perspective,” I told him as I flushed the toilet and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

Jim got a washcloth wet and handed it to me. “Get yourself in bed. I’ll fill you guys in once you’re settled.”

“You’re including me in this now?” Daken asked.

I punched him in the stomach as I walked by, looking and feeling like a zombie. “We need brains that are sharper than my hormone-drowned, dull-as-an-eraser mind right now. You’re included.”

“You heard the lady,” Jim told him.

I went straight into the room and pulled off my scrubs, not caring who was in there, who was watching, or if anyone could see my rolls of fat. I pulled on my pajama bottoms, and then went looking for the top, but couldn’t find it. “Have you seen my--?”

I turned around and both Jim and Daken were staring at me in kind of a strange way. “What?”

“Well, aside from the fact that it’s kind of odd to see my stepmother naked, you’re glowing.”

“Yeah, people say that about pregnant women all the time.”

“No, dear,” Jim told me. He moved me over to stand in front of our full-length mirror. “You’re glowing.”

They were right. My stomach was glowing pink. It was small, about the size of a cherry tomato, but there was a spot in my abdomen that was shining right through all my belly fat and skin. “Well, I guess we don’t have to question whether the baby’s a mutant or not.”

Jim was fascinated by it, and got down to take a closer look. “Nope, can’t see any details. But this should make for a pretty interesting third trimester.”

“That’s just weird,” Daken said. It looked like he wanted to see, but he was standing all the way over by the door.

“Come on, then, it’s not gonna bite you. Come over and take a look,” I told him.

“Hey, you suppose we’ll be able to see its gender?” Jim asked.

“Not this early, old man. If it was a boy, it’d probably just look like a peanut with a little extra bump between its legs.” Daken mused.

“I swear, you two are like Kyle and Louis. Won’t they be surprised when they find out?”

Jim stood up at that with a serious look on his face. “You’re not going to tell them. The fewer people know about this, the better. At least until we can get things settled in town. I mean, you can tell Kurt and Hank and the others, but it has to stop there.”

Instead of my pajama top, I grabbed one of my t-shirts and pulled that on, then went over to the bed. “So, what happened to Travis?” I crawled into bed and pulled two of our four quilts over me.

Daken pulled up the laundry hamper near the end of the bed and sat on that. “Something happened to your pet Indian?”

“Shut it, Daken. No racial slurs around here. Lucy will make your beer taste like buttermilk for a week.”

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

He did.

Jim cleared his throat. “Well, I think it’s best if I tell you what happened up there, first.” He sat on the bed next to me and looked down at me for a moment, then back over at Daken. “There weren’t that many of them, actually. But the main problem was that two of the guys - the leaders -  were pretty big and strong, and they insisted they talk to me alone.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a problem.”

“Wasn’t prepared to tear them to shreds just yet. Oh, when the bodies started coming out of the wreckage, believe me, I had thought about it. No, they were all wearing their blue hoods with white crosses on the foreheads, just like the ones back in the US. One of the guys spoke with a Georgia accent, so I’m pretty sure that’s where they were from.”

“Yeah, I know about those guys,” I told him.

“Anyway, they said they needed to make an example of one of us to make sure no more mutants came up to their territory. They wanted me to go with them. And as self-sacrificing as I used to be, I told them to get stuffed.” He looked over at me and smiled. “I keep my promises as best I can.”

Daken rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, so how did your friend bite it, then?”

“Well, we’re not sure he’s dead, but Travis went with them, instead.”

“I thought they wanted a mutant?”

“Yeah, they did. And they got one. Travis changed. He had a bright star on his face, and the scent of him changed. He smelled like a bear instead of a man. Anyway, he told them that if they wanted him, they’d have to catch him, and he just blew them over.” Jim shook his head. “I mean, I’ve seen Pietro run, but this was like something else. He just turned into something like a spirit, and raced at them. They all turned to him and started shooting.”

“What about Jackson and the others?”

“They rounded up most of the men, but a couple of them were too quick, and it was too dark.”Jim looked down at his hands where he was picking some dirt out of his fingernails. “He led them up toward the mountains.”

I sighed. “That creature.”

Jim nodded. “You didn’t know he was one of us?” Jim asked me.

“If he could mask his scent, there’s no way I’d know. I told you, it’s a smell for me. Like garlic breath, or someone wearing bad perfume. You don’t really know who it is until you’re right there with them.”

“But in the car the other night, you said you could only detect the three of us. Are you saying the baby has a smell?”

Daken huffed. “Of course it has a smell. You can’t smell it? You’re sniffing her neck all the time. I thought that’s what you were doing.” He stood and came over closer to the bed. “So, what are you gonna do? Go after him? Try to find him? I’ll tell you right now, if you even suggest that she go with you, I’ll pin you to the rafters with my claws and leave you there.”

“No, I’m going to head out in a couple hours to go look. Right now, the feds are crawling all over the place looking for him and the men who went after him. I gotta wait until they’re all gone before I even make an attempt.” Jim scratched his head. “I think I should also get some sleep. It’s been a long night, and my senses aren’t so sharp after breathing in all that burning oil smoke.”

“I’ll go with you,” Daken offered. “You’re missing a partner, and someone’s gotta make sure you can get home if something out there tears you to shreds. Besides, I’m just itching for a fight. Let one of those AMS… um… how the hell do you curse in this house, anyway? Beer turned into buttermilk? That’s just not right.” Daken left us alone in the room.

“I’m gonna shower first. I smell like smoke and sweat.”

“Wake me if I’m asleep when you climb into bed,” I closed my eyes.

“Not a chance. You sleep. Then when I get up, I’ll wake you up for some lunch before we head out.” He leaned down to kiss my cheek, and I turned my head for a proper kiss.

“I thought you were tired,” he said in a low timbre. He smiled against my cheek and then kissed my ear.

“I am. But I also need some time with you. Go shower. I’ll wait for you.”

**  
  
**

The alarm was set for 2:00, but we were awakened by a phone call just after one. Jim reached over me to get the phone, then laid back down, and I snuggled up to his chest again. “Yeah, this is Jim.” His voice was scratchy. At first I suspected it was because of the smoke, but then I remembered that his body would have eliminated all of the smoke damage hours ago. He was putting on a voice for his boss. That made me smile.

“Yeah, I just got some sleep.” He sniffed a couple of times. “No, I should be fine.” He was so good at this morning voice thing, I was almost laughing with amusement. I tucked my head under his arm and chuckled. He tapped me on the head and gave me an amused look of warning. “Yeah, she’s fine. We got home just after 11, and went straight to bed for a while.” He put me in a light headlock to muffle my laughter, which made me squeal. “Yeah, give me an hour. I’ll be there.” He hung up the phone and tossed it on the end of the bed.

“What are you trying to do there, get me in trouble, little lady?”

I coughed and then put on my best scratchy morning voice. “Yeah, I just got a little sleep. Give me an hour.”

He laughed, then rolled me over. “Takes me ten minutes to get up to the refinery from here. What should we do with the other fifty minutes?”

“How about get something to eat?” Daken was standing in the doorway. “You two are pretty loud. I’m not staying here again unless I either get insulation for that room, or earplugs.” Daken turned away and headed down the stairs. “I’m hungry. Make something for lunch.”

“I need food, too,” I said sweetly. “What say we get dressed, make some sandwiches and get ready to go?”

“You’re not coming with us.” He got up and started getting dressed.

“No, but I was hoping you could drop me off at the House of Blue first. I want to see if they’ve had any luck with those darts.” He tossed me some clothes and nodded. “Good idea. Send me a message after you talk to them. I’m more than a little curious, myself.”

Daken had made peanut butter sandwiches for Jim and I, and was eating his way through a package of lunch meat wrapped up in cheese slices, himself. “Here, made you lunch.” He pointed to the stack of six sandwiches on the table. “Couldn’t find the jam, so I put honey on half of ‘em, and Marmite on the others.”

Jim’s face lit up. “Marmite? Where the hell did you find Marmite?” He looked through the sandwiches, setting the honey ones aside for me. “Food of the gods. Right up there with liver and eel.”

Daken shrugged. “Let’s eat on the way. I’m itching to go hunting.”

“I’ll take mine to go,” I told Jim as I tucked them into a plastic bag.

By the time he dropped me off at Kurt and Hank’s apartment, I had finished a bottle of apple juice, two of the sandwiches, and I had started on the third.

I had called ahead, and Hank said I would be more than welcome to spend the day with them. Mr. Stark was still in town, and had been helping them run chemical compounds through various databases around the world, trying to find the exact manufacturer of the drug that was on those darts. When I arrived, Tony and Sage were sitting at the table, typing away on their laptops, and Kurt and Hank were in the living room, reading.

“Hey, so, what’s the news?” I asked, setting my purse on the table by the door.

“They’re still working on it.” Kurt put down his book and patted the seat next to him on the sofa.

“Actually, I was wondering if one of you had a computer I could borrow? I haven’t checked my email in several days.”

“You don’t check it on your phone?” Stark asked, not looking up from his screen.

“No. ‘Cause I suck at using the phone keyboard, and if I want to send a reply, it would take me an hour just to get a couple of lines written.”

“You can use my laptop,” Mr. Stark volunteered.

“Aren’t you going to be using it for a while?”

“What?” He looked up. “Oh, not this one. I’m sorry, where are my manners.” He got up and went over to a pile of suitcases and briefcases near the side window. He opened one of the briefcases and pulled out a notebook computer. “Here, this one. It’s already connected to the internet.”

“Thanks.” I sat next to Kurt on the sofa and we all set about reading again. I logged into my email It was mostly spam. Lots of weekly flyers for stores I’d never go to again, universities that said I could find a better job by advancing my degree, and dozens of lending and mortgage companies telling me it was the right time for me to buy a home. Nothing personal. Nothing important.

Except the newsletter.

Now, before we go on, I just want to say that I loved those newsletters. I looked forward to every single one of them. They were always long, written very well, had a lot of great features about things happening in the M-gene world, and there was a lot of general news about what was happening, and who was doing what, where. And the best part about it? Since Jim and I had gone up to live in Alberta, he had been left completely out of it.

I tucked my feet up under me to sit cross-legged on the sofa, propped up the notebook on my lap, and started reading.

“Something good?” Hank asked. He was looking up at me from across the rim of his glasses.

“Nah, just my M-gene newsletter that I get every now and then, you know.” I went back to reading.

A few moments later, he was standing in front of me. “There’s an M-gene newsletter?”

I turned the laptop around to show him. “Yeah, it’s mainly just about what’s happening with famous and influential mutants and powered-humans in the world, but there’s also a lot of good advice about how to stay hidden, where to live, where not to live, how to cope with family that doesn’t understand your abilities…”

He picked up the laptop and scrolled through, then he sat next to me, and I watched as he saved the email, opened it in another program, typed in some code and commands, and a screen came up with a whole bunch of internet mumbo-jumbo on it. “This isn’t a newsletter, this is an email. Just a regular personal email to you.”

I laughed. “It’s a newsletter that I’ve been getting for years. It can’t be a personal email. Maybe the person’s putting through a router or something that makes it look like a personal email.”

Stark came and looked at the laptop over Hank’s shoulder. He reached over and typed in a few more commands, which brought up another screen. “No, whoever’s been sending this to you has run it through some engines that make it look like a newsletter.”

“Well, who would it be from? I don’t know anyone who could do this outside of you guys and the professor.”

Stark took the laptop over to the table, sat down, plugged it into the computer he was using, and started typing again. “Not the professor. This isn’t from his part of the world. It doesn’t look like it’s from any part of the world, to be honest.”

I didn’t even care. I just wanted to read the update, and then go on to checking global news, but there was something about the way the others were reacting. Hank had gone over to watch what Stark was doing, and Sage scooted over so she could see, too.

“Look,” Stark said, pointing to the screen. “I start tracing it, and then it changes location before even my computer can catch it. Whoever is doing this has some amazing algorithms they’re running.”

“It seems almost intuitive. Like there’s a really fast computer playing hide-and-seek,” Sage added.

I turned back around and looked over at Kurt. He was just watching everything happen with mild interest. He looked at me and smiled.

“You know?” I mouthed out.

“No, but they’ll find out.”

“That, over there, is not my area of expertise, so I will leave them to do what they do.” He folded his book on his lap, and crossed his legs. “So, how are you doing today?”

“Tired, desperately hoping for a full night’s sleep tonight.” I put my legs down and sat on my hands. “Oh, and the baby has started to glow. Want to see?”

**I was just untucking my shirt when we heard a voice come from the computer I had been using. “Good afternoon, Mr. Stark. I was wondering when I would finally get a chance to meet you.”**


	32. The Power of Restraint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim goes out again to look for Travis, and Lucy gets to spend some time with Kurt.

Jim Howlett can be incredibly dangerous. I don’t say that lightly, and I’m comparing him to everything and everyone else out there. He is the most dangerous living creature I’ve ever even heard of. I can tell you this, if he wanted to, he could have gone after every one of those AMS assholes and ripped them into such tiny shreds that nothing, save DNA testing, would have recognized them. Oh, maybe a loose eyeball here or there could have provided a partial retina to scan, but I’m sure he could have even fixed that.

And if anyone went after him, nothing they could do would have allowed them to bring him in if he didn’t want to be brought in.

That being said, with all of his power, and all of this ferocity that he has somewhere deep inside of him, his greatest strength is his restraint. That’s why I have never, in all the years I’ve known him, been afraid of him. Those who are close to him can see it. We can recognize when he has that look, like he’s holding himself together as tightly as he can.

When he came back that night, he had that look. I was sleeping on the sofa. Mr. Stark had gone back to his accommodations somewhere in Calgary, and everyone but Hank was asleep, as well. I was awakened when he lifted my head, sat down, and put my head back in his lap. But even though I was only barely awake, I could still recognize that look.

“How did it go?” Hank asked.

“Pretty bad.” He put his hand on my head and started petting my hair.

“Did you find him?”

“No. But we found the remains of two other AMS men.”

“Remains? That’s not good,” Hank said slowly. He had apparently been reading. I heard him fold up a book and set it aside. My focus, however, had been fixed on Jim’s jaw and the way it moved back and forth as if he was gritting his teeth. “What are you going to do?”

“For now? God forgive me, I left them there.” He leaned down and smelled my neck, then sat up again. “It’s started to snow. They’ll be buried by morning, if they’re not eaten by wolves or bears before then.”

“So, those AMS men why do you think they went after him?”

“They were the martyrs. I think that was the plan all along. That group didn’t want one of us just so they could kill us and string us up by our heels in the middle of town. They wanted one of us to attack them and if that didn’t happen, probably frame us for the attack.”

“That’s why they were going after you and Daken instead of Lucy.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long silence. I brought my hand up and put it on Jim’s.

“Logan,” Hank said softly.

“Yeah?”

“Take her home.”

I pushed myself up to sit, then rested my head on Jim’s shoulder.

“I was going to ask about those darts.” His voice was trailing off like he couldn’t concentrate on anything.

“Take her home. I’ll talk to you about everything that we discovered later.”

 

By the time we got home, I wasn’t really tired anymore. I went inside and took off my coat, boots, gloves and hat, then went to the closet and brought out Jim’s camping pack and set it on the coffee table.

“What are you doing?” he asked after he hung up the keys.

I just looked at him for a few seconds, then smiled. “It isn’t what I’m doing, it’s what you’re doing. You’re going to go out there and find Travis.” I walked up to him and put my hand on his cheek. “Then you’re going to bring him back here, in whatever state he’s in.”

Jim had a pained expression. “It might not be a pretty state.”

“That’s okay. I’ve seen a lot of ‘not pretty’ in my career. I’ll be fine with it. What I’m not fine with is you coming back here tonight and wasting time while our friend is out there in need of your help.”

Jim kissed me, softly and gently, for a long time, then wrapped his arms around my waist and held me close. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“You won’t. I’ll call and ask Kurt to come and stay with me. I know this might take a few days, so why don’t you call in to work while I start packing your things. How many days food do you want me to pack?” I pulled away and smiled. “You can take care of your own weapons and tools. I have no idea what you need there.”

“Pack enough for two days,” Jim told me. “If I’m longer than two days, I can hunt.

Jim loaded up his camping bag, I pulled out what canned and dried or frozen food we had, and added in some of my applesauce and protein bars. There wasn’t much else here, but I figured Jim could just stop somewhere and get whatever else he needed on his way out to the mountains.

Daken came into the room after a few minutes, and asked what was going on. “Search and rescue. Might be a few days, who knows.” Jim just kept packing his things. He wrapped a long knife up in a cloth, and tucked it on the side of his pack with the handle sticking forward, then snapped it in place. 

“Count me in!” Daken announced, his face lit up at the sight of the knife. “Lemme just throw a few things together.” He ran upstairs, leaving Jim and I alone in the living room again.

“Take care of yourself up there,” I told him. The living room was cold. Which meant that the radiators couldn’t keep up with the falling temperatures outside. 

He came up to me and rubbed my arms. “I’ll be fine.” He looked up at the ceiling. “That brat’ll be fine, too. We’re virtually indestructible. And with him tagging along, you better believe there will be some kind  of meat for every meal.”

“Born hunter?”

There must have been worry in my voice. Jim turned my face to look him in the eye. “He’ll hunt the animals, I’ll be hunting for Travis. I can’t promise for him, by my claws are stayin’ right where they are unless something really bad happens.”

I nodded. “I’ll call Kurt in the morning.”

“Call him now.”

“He’s asleep. And I will be, too in a few minutes. I’ll set the alarm on the house before I go to bed, and then I’ll go pick him up in the morning.”

Jim had been driving Travis’s Yukon since the night of the refinery explosion. This meant he had a better vehicle to take on his search mission, and it left me with the car if I needed it for anything. 

“He can get here on his own,” Jim told me. He put the rolled up tent and bedroll on the top of his pack and fastened the straps.

Daken was ready in a matter of minutes. “If things get nasty out there, don’t try to stop me, old man. You may have lost your bite, but at least one of us isn’t afraid of getting his claws dirty.” He slung his pack over one shoulder and headed outside.

Jim picked up his gear. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to send messages from out there.”

“I know you two will be fine. I don’t worry.” I crossed my arms and smiled.

“I do.”

“I know.”

I gave him one more kiss, then I saw him out the door. “What do you figure? Two days? Three?”

“Who knows. Depends on if he wants to be found or not.”

“Well, if I’m not here or at the clinic, I’ll be at the House of Blue.”

Jim just smiled. Then he went to the truck, unlocked it, and I watched as the two men put their things in the back and drove off.

It had thought it would be nice to have the house to myself, but it was actually just very quiet and kind of sad. I went over to my place on the sofa by the fireplace and tried to read. A few minutes later, I gave up, and went to bed.

 

Kurt arrived around ten the next morning. He seemed more than happy to come and stay with me while the others were gone. When he arrived, he stomped the snow off of his boots, took off his coat, and immediately slipped into his normal, elf-like form. “I really do feel more comfortable here. In the apartment, I have to worry about moving away from the windows whenever I look like myself, and I can’t really help the others with their research.”

“Well, you can come here and help me with mine.” I made some coffee and brought it to the dining room table. 

“What are you researching?” He asked with one ear piqued.

“I’m not really researching anything,” I told him. “I’m just curious about a couple of things.”   
“About Logan?”

I poured myself a cup of coffee and added an embarrassing amount of sugar to it. “I’ve been thinking about that other Lucy. The version of me he knew in the other reality.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Wouldn’t you?”

Kurt took a sip of coffee and nodded. “Probably.

“Do you think, when he looks at me, he still sees that other Lucy?”

“No. I know he doesn’t.”

“You sound so sure,” I said as I drank my candy-sweet coffee.

“I am sure. That other girl - the other Lucy - wasn’t you. And no matter what you’re thinking, he really didn’t know her very well.” Kurt’s voice was reassuring.

“But he said that he had recognized me. Even though I wasn’t the same as…”

“Something happened to her, and it left an impression. But he knows you two are not the same person. And I think he just wanted to make sure that what happened to her, never happened to you. I don’t think he ever sees her in you, though.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, though. It just makes me wonder sometimes about his initial intentions. I have no doubt that he loves me, but does he love me as someone he can protect, and somehow make up for something he failed to do before, or does he protect me because…” I let my thought trail off. Somehow, this conversation seemed a little ridiculous. “No, nevermind.”

“You know, I love to tell stories. And although I don’t usually tell stories about people I know like this, I’m going to give you a little gift. I know Logan better than just about anyone except maybe Peter. But, but many times, I see things that even Peter doesn’t see in him.” Kurt set his coffee aside and pulled up his legs to sit cross-legged in his chair.

“It started when you left, after coming to visit the school. Well, to be honest, a lot of things started before then, but I think seeing you changed the way he viewed this new reality. When he saw you, he realized that a lot of the mistakes that we had all made in our past never existed in this world. He realized that his clean and fresh start would be absolute, and he could do or be anything he wanted to.”

“But he could always be anything he wanted to,” I said.

“Not in our other reality. He had been kidnapped and weaponized, brainwashed and used as a tool so many times, all that he knew was a life of violence and anger, only briefly interrupted by friends and non-enemies. But here, he saw that you were doing well. This girl who had a terrible fate due to other events, was just fine, and actually thriving, in her own way.”

He picked up his coffee mug with his tail and took another sip. “And then you changed him. You started writing letters to him telling him about all sorts of things, and he read and kept and cherished every one of them. I remember him coming into my room and sitting down to read to me about your SAT scores, and telling me when you got accepted into the nursing program at the community college.”

“That really wasn’t much to celebrate. I think they accepted everyone who applied.” I stared down into my mug and smiled, thinking about all of the letters I had written to him when I was a kid.

“To him, it was worth a round of beer. And after he went to your graduation party, he was like a proud uncle. It was after that when he decided he wanted a different life. He’d still go on missions with us, and he’d throw himself into the heat of battles when necessary. But he was different.” Kurt looked up at the chandelier, as if he was trying to find the words. “He was more careful, more level-headed, and he wouldn’t let himself go into one of his rages. I think every time he went in, his mind was always thinking about coming out alive. Whereas before, he never gave a thought to his own safety. Part of that was because of his healing factor, but I also think he never really had a future he wanted to live for.”

“You’ve heard before that this, his life right now, is the best it’s ever been?” I nodded. “Well, I think a lot of that has to do with you showing him that it isn’t a matter of him deserving you or you deserving him. He doesn’t have to earn a life like this in our new reality.”

“He’s retired from what he used to do with you guys, hasn’t he?”

“He retired after you patched him up that first time over a year ago.”

That made me smile. I have never been one to tell someone what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Especially if I knew nothing about that person’s line of work in the first place. But I also really didn’t want to think of him working as a killing machine or a hitman, or even just the muscle of an operation.

Kurt leaned forward with his elbow on the table, his chin braced in the palm of his hand. “You know, he had to jump through some serious hoops to get those marriage certificate forms filed. And even I struggled with the ethics of it.”

“You should have. I mean, just think about it, marrying me without my permission?”

“Yeah, and the ethics of that decision were only part my struggle. I was also concerned with his well-being. He had to pull in just about every favor he owed, and then some to do it. And then, when I asked him what would happen if you said no, you know what he told me?”

“That he’d think of something?” I suggested.

“No. He just looked at me and said “I don’t know what I’ll do if she says no.” I think he was already so far gone into this new life, working for what he really wanted, he couldn’t even see a future where it wasn’t going to happen.”

I didn’t know what to say to that at first, then I let out a long sigh. “He never told me any of this.”

“He has amazing self-control these days. The amount of restraint that he exercises is astonishing to say the least.” Kurt sat back in his chair and smiled sweetly. “You treat him as a man and nothing else. You don’t even see the animal that he’s got hidden inside of him, and part of that’s because he’s been so good at keeping it in check.”

“And the other part?” I asked.

“Is because you would always see the prince instead of the beast, even if he did let it out. Those AMS guys, they can only see the beasts.”

I shook my head. “I wish someone had told me all of this earlier. I might not have tried to run away from him that time.”

“Yeah, about that. I think I should tell you another story.”

“What’s this one about?” I asked, expecting to hear Kurt tell me about how angry Jim was he found out I was gone.

“When he came home, and Sage told him all of the news, it was the only I can remember ever seen him in such a complete state of panic, I thought he was going to break down.”

“Break down, like nervous breakdown?”

Kurt shook his head. “No.” He put his hand on my arm. “Break down and cry.”

 


	33. A Need for the Ordinary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's always one thing after another, and Lucy starts to realize what she really wants is for things to get back to normal.

For the first two days, I was fine. Kurt taught me how to play Cribbage and Backgammon, both of which Jim loved, and neither of which I had played before. And I taught Kurt how to make my mom’s caramel cinnamon rolls. It was like having a friend stay for the weekend.

Then on the third day, I went back to work. That was great, actually, because I had something to occupy my time and my thoughts while Jim was away. Things had settled down a lot since the explosion, but we still had some of the injured coming in for follow-up visits, and with lingering lung problems and, of course, our burn patients.

But mostly, I liked being back at work in a somewhat mutant-friendly environment. By that time, everyone knew I had that strange mutant gene, but they also knew that it was utterly harmless to them, and there was no reason to be afraid of me.

I did, however, go in and talk to Dr. Green about one pressing issue.

“I’m telling you right now, I’m not an obstetrician. I don’t know if I am honestly the best choice for you, Lucy,” he told me in his office. It seemed he didn’t have to turn on the white noise machine anymore, he was just keeping it on all the time.

“Dr. Green, I would go to someone else, if there was anyone else I could trust in this entire province, but unlike San Francisco, there aren’t any mutant clinics up here. The closest one is down in Calgary, and that’s just too far to go. Especially for when I go into labor.”

“Why can’t you just see a regular obstetrician, then? I mean, most people outside of town don’t know you’re a mutant,” he leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on the desk. “I can give you a couple of recommendations.”

“Because it’s glaringly obvious it’s a mutant baby, and I… I just don’t trust anyone.” I crossed my arms. Something about the conversation I was having and the way I was having it reminded me a lot of my mother. She would take a stand like this with my school principals, my doctors, my teachers, and once even with my youth minister.

“You can’t possibly know that. It isn’t guaranteed that two mutant parents will give birth to a mutant baby.”

I stood and lifted my scrubs shirt, then pulled my pants, boxers, and extra pair of underpants just under my belly. “Glaringly obvious. In quite literal terms.”

Dr. Green looked dumbstruck. He just sat there for a moment, staring, and then tilted his head from one side to the other. “That’s…”

“I think it’s safe to guess that this isn’t a normal human baby with normal human genes.”

He sighed and then sat back in his chair. He took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then scrubbed his hand down his face. “Alright. I suppose you don’t have much of a choice, do you?”

“No. And I’m really worried about what’s going to happen when he or she is born, too. I mean, will I have to keep it in the house, or under a blanket, or use some kind of makeup to keep it from glowing at any random time?” I asked.

“I doubt it. Right now, you have a fetus that’s just forming. It’s probably just getting used to its new arms and legs and trying to make sense of the body functions. So, if one of those functions involves glowing, I suspect it’s just figuring that out right now.” He came over to me and took a closer look at my abdomen. “Is it like this all the time?”

“No, mostly just during the day. And not all day, either. I never see it at night.”

He nodded. “Then I think you have nothing to worry about right now. So, what’s the earliest possible date of conception?” he asked. “Or do you know?”

“Earliest? Um… couple days before Christmas? Maybe Christmas Eve?”

“So, the farthest along you could be is about 6 weeks?” He tilted his head to the side again. “Are you sure it couldn’t have been November?”

“Positive. Gotta have sex to get pregnant, last time I checked. So, I’m 100% sure the earliest would be the last week of December.”

“Then your fetus definitely has an advanced rate of growth right now.” He held up his thumb to my abdomen and checked the size of the glow. “Unless it’s giving off an awful lot of light, I would guess that the size is about an inch, maybe an inch and a half long?”

“And what does that mean?”

“That means you’ve got a 10-week old fetus at six weeks. My guess is that this little sprout has a healing factor like its father. The first trimester is possibly the most dangerous in terms of development, so I would suspect that it is repairing itself as soon as something thinks it’s broken.” He stood up again, leaned against the front of his desk and smiled. “Or, it could mean that this world will have an Incredible Glowing Hulk of its very own.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, just someone from another lifetime.”

 

On Saturday, I woke up in the middle of the night, crying from a horrible nightmare. Part of me knew it was just a dream, and that there was no way I would end up being alone here for the rest of my life, but then the dream seemed so real. I’d read that sometimes the massive amount of hormones running through a pregnant woman’s body can create some very lucid dreams. Also, I think there was a combination of Jim being gone, and me still being on edge after the explosion at the refinery.

Kurt stood at the door to the bedroom, and looked in on me. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Just some bad dreams.”

He came in and sat on the end of the bed. “Anything I can do?”

“No. I think there’s only one thing that will get rid of these nightmares, and he’s still up in the mountains.” I took a couple of shallow breaths, rolled over onto my side, and brought my knees up. It was just about the only position I could stay in without feeling nauseous.

“Do you want me to ask Ororo to go and look for him?”

“No,” I told him. “I’m sure he’s fine. And unless something terrible happens, I think we should just let him keep looking.”

Kurt nodded. He patted my knee and got up. “Well, let me know if you need anything. I’ll be right next door.”

“Thanks,” I told him as he left the room.

Later that night, or rather in the early hours of the morning, someone set fire to our garage.

 

“I’ll be fine,” I told Hank, clutching my coffee mug with both hands so they would stop shaking. “I’m just really angry, and frustrated. And I wish those people would just go away and leave us alone. You don’t need to send anyone up to go and bring Jim back.”

Truthfully, I wanted him there. I wanted to be completely and utterly selfish, and I wanted someone to go up there, bring him back, and have him deal with all of the extra paperwork and police reports and insurance claims and everything.

“Ororo’s already gone to find him,” Kurt told me, patting my back. He took away my coffee and gave me a cup of tea. “If you were gone and your house was on fire, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“I suppose so,” I told him. “Wait, you told her to tell him the HOUSE was on fire?”

Kurt shrugged. “I don’t remember if I said house or garage.”

“They are technically attached,” Hank added. “At least according to your insurance forms, they’re attached.”

“He’s going to be in a blind panic,” I told them. “I don’t want him to…”

Mr. Stark came into the dining room and hung up his phone. “The guys’ll be out here tomorrow morning to install the CCTV cameras. I can have them hooked up to your home computer here. Oh, wait, is that it?” He pointed to my old desktop computer running Windows XP in the corner of the dining room.

“Yeah, it’s kind of old, but it still works. That thing got me through nursing school.”

He just stared at me for a few moments. “Riiight. Okay, I’ve got a couple more phone calls to make. I’ll be back.”

“Hey, thanks for all you’re doing. I really don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here.” I looked up at the clock. It was almost 8:00 and I was still in my robe and pajamas. “I should start getting ready for work. I’m already going to be late.”

“You’re still going into work? Even though someone set fire to your garage?” I had long since established that most of Jim’s friends wouldn’t understand my life, but I thought Hank might have a little understanding.

“Yes. I need the job. Not so much the money, but I need to go somewhere and do what a normal nurse would do and feel normal for a change. Since I moved here, it’s been one disaster after another. Including exploding refineries, cannibalistic beasts, and being knocked unconscious by a giant ice creature turning over the truck I was in. I want to go to work, and I want to treat kids with sore throats, and old men with ingrown toenails, and all sorts of people with gastritis and bronchitis, and arthritis and all sorts of other itises.”

Nobody said a word to me as I headed upstairs. Probably because they all knew that the night before I had barely slept from the nightmares, was awakened in the early morning by Kurt telling me the garage was aflame, and then I had two hours of dealing with firemen, policemen, investigators, and phone calls from nearly everyone in town who knew me.

All I wanted was a shower, and a lovely day of chaos at work.

But hormones, stress, and lack of sleep took over as soon as I was in the shower. I had just washed my hair, had leaned forward, and broke down completely, sinking into the bathtub with the water still spraying all over me, I curled up into a ball and just cried. I couldn’t hear the front door open and close over the sound of the shower and my heart beating in my ears. I don’t know how long I had been there, but after a short while, I picked up a washcloth, covered my face, and willed myself to calm down. 

Things had been worse in the past. I’d been fired without any notice, I’d been forced out of an apartment, I’d nearly been raped, and I’d been kicked out of one of my schools.

While I sat there in the tub with a washcloth on my head, chin on my knees, and hands over the washcloth, I heard the sound of boots on the bathroom tile. When I looked up, the tears came back again.

“This is so stupid,” I told him. “I could cope with all kinds of stuff before. But now there’s this little fire, and six days without you, and I fall apart.”

He didn’t say anything, God love him, but just took off his coat, turned off the shower, wrapped me up in our largest towel, and picked me up. The tremble in the way that Jim held me made me realize that I wasn’t the only one who was falling apart.

“I need this right now,” he finally said in a dry, husky voice. He kicked the bathroom door closed, and sat down on the edge of the tub, pulling me into his lap. “You have no idea just how much I need this.”

“You didn’t find him.” I whispered with my arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Not even a trace. And to make matters worse, we did find traces of someone else.”

I sat up and took his hand in mine. That was when I saw it: blood in the spaces between his fingers. Of course I knew what that meant. And he knew I saw it, too.

“I think you need a shower,” I told him. “There might not be much hot water left, though.”

“That’s okay.” He told me. “Look, Lucy…” I didn’t let him finish. I put the towel over his head and pulled on my bathrobe. He just smiled, then took off his belt.

“I’m going to get dressed, and then you can drive me into work.” I told him.

“You’re going to work today?” He asked as he pulled his shirt over his head. 

“I think I need something normal,” I told him. “If they send me home, I’ll come home, but otherwise, I’m going in.”

Jim’s face softened, as he looked down and away. “You don’t have to work, you know.”

“I know. But aside from the fact that I want to get back into a routine, I have my first OB appointment today with Dr. Green. We’re going to start a chart for me.”

He looked up at me and smiled. I think he needed this kind of ordinary news as much as I did. “Dr. Green, eh?”

“Yeah. Do you want to be there for it?”

“I can do that?”

“Yeah. But only if you scrub behind your ears and promise not to get angry when I’m taking off my clothes for another man.”

He finished undressing and got into the shower. “That’s not another man. That’s... “ his voice trailed off as he turned on the shower.

“Yeah, I know.” I didn’t need to ask. I didn’t need to know.

Kurt stayed at the house to make sure everything was okay while we were gone. Mr. Stark stayed with him and was planning something, but I was too exhausted and too ready to get away from it all to pay him much notice.

On our way into town, Jim opened up to me. “The claws came out,” he said.

“Yeah, I know. I could see the blood, and it smelled like you.” The Yukon was uncomfortably silent for a while. “Were you hurt?”

“I healed.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Jim smiled. “I was, but it wasn’t bad.”

When we got to the clinic, we both just sat in the truck for a few minutes, talking. “I missed you like crazy,” I told him. “The first couple days were okay, but after that, I kind of fell apart.”

He just smiled.

“And Kurt and I talked a lot about you. It was pretty reassuring.”

“What did he say?”

“All good stuff. He kept telling me how much you adored me even back when I was a kid.”

“He’s not lyin’.” Jim turned off the engine and unlocked the doors, then he leaned over and gave me a kiss. “Come on, we gotta get you in there to work, and then I’m gonna go see how our arson case is shaping up.”

 

I was glad to be back at work. The staff was very understanding and welcoming. Although both Dr. Murphy and Dr. Green told me that I could go home if I wanted, I said I wanted to stay and try to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Clara was thankfully gone, and a young girl, Lindsey, who I found out was also Louis and Kyle’s babysitter, had taken her place. 

A little later in the day, Mr. Sorensen came in to see me. I met him out in the lobby waiting area where he had been sitting and chatting with some of our other patients. “Are you feeling alright?” I asked. 

“Oh, me? I’m fine. Still a bit sore here and there, but considerin’ what happened, it’s nuthin’.” He stuffed his hat in his pocket and clasped his hands behind his back. “No, I’m here ‘cause we never did getcha to dinner, and me and the boys’ll be goin’ out on the lake tomorra. I was just thinkin’ that you an’ the mister might wanna come out with us and mebbe catch a trout or two.”

“Ice fishing?” I asked.

Jack Sorensen always had a very straight-forward way about him. I think that’s why we are all such good friends. Even Hank and Peter, who usually kept to their own quarters, would go out of their way to go visit Jack when they came to see us. The town respected him, they felt for him when his wife died, they’ve stood by and helped him raising his boys, and being one of those upstanding members of the town, they looked to him for advice, strength, and example.

The fact that he was inviting Jim and I out ice fishing in a public place the day after our garage was set on fire was a pretty amazing sign.

“Yah. Now I know ye prolly never been, but we kin put some coffee on the stove out there, and roast maybe some hot dogs, an’ the boys would sure be glad ta show you how it’s done.”

“I love ice fishing. I used to live in Toronto, and Wisconsin when I was a kid. I used to go up to the lake on the weekends until I was probably about ten years old. I would love to go with you, and I’m sure Jim will love it, too.”

“Well, then, that sounds good to me. You guys can meet up at my house maybe around 6? That way we kin get up ‘dere and set things up b’fore sunrise.”

“Aah, well, let me check with Jim and--”

“You’re going.” Dr. Green interjected. I spun around, surprised to hear him there. “I’ll call Logan. You’re going. Doctor’s orders. I want you to go up there, relax, take a bunch of tea and cocoa with you and get away from this.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

Dr. Green gave me a look that sent chills down my spine. It also made me realize that I wasn’t really fine. I opened my mouth to say something, and he gave me that look again. “The only reason I haven’t sent you home already is because I think you’re safer here while Logan’s out doing his bloodhound work,” he whispered in my ear.

“Can we make it six-thirty?” I asked.

“Should be okay, but be ready to go. If yer late, I’ll come by poundin’ on yer front door.” Jack patted me on the shoulder, waved to some of the other people in the room, and then left.

“Keep that friend, Lucy,” Dr. Green told me quietly. “There are only a dozen people of influence in this town, and that man can sway every one of them.”

“Really? How’s that?” I asked.

“Because he has the hearts of every citizen here.” Dr. Green signed a paper and handed it to Lindsey. “Come on, let’s get back to work. You want normal? We’ve got a kid with mono, a young lady who’s dehydrated and frostbitten, and a man with food poisoning waiting on some medicine and hot blankets.”


	34. A New Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go ice fishing with Jack and the boys, and an unexpected friend turns up.

“You really are the prettiest little thing when you sleep.” Jim had this thing he liked to do. He would put his hand on my cheek and just run his thumb along my eyebrow to wake me up. All the time, he’d say things that I would only half-hear in my semi-awake state.

That morning, however, I was grumpy, my feet were cold, my stomach was upset, and I was having none of his sugar-talk for some reason. “Three problems with what you just said.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“I’m not pretty, I’m not asleep anymore, and I am not, by the furthest stretch of the imagination, little. I’m five foot six, incredibly overweight, and pregnant. There is nothing about me that is or has ever wanted to be little.”

Jim laughed. “You have no idea just how incredibly refreshing you are, Lucy.”

I turned my head and looked up at him. “Refreshing?”

He smiled and pulled the covers off of me. “Come on, we’re going ice fishing.”

“What do you mean by refreshing?”

“I mean you’re the only woman I’ve ever known who hasn’t cared a lick about how I think she looks. That’s pretty damn refreshing.” He pulled three shirts out of my dresser, a pair of leggings, jeans, and two pair of socks, then threw it all on the bed. “Here, wear all of this. It’s gonna be cold out there, and even though we’ll be in the ice house, and he’s got a stove, you’ll be miserable if you don’t layer.”

As I went through the clothes he’d picked out for me, I thought about what he’d said. “You never talk about your other women.”

“No, I don’t.” He buttoned up his flannel shirt, and then sat on the end of the bed. “Never see much point in talking about the past.” He got up and picked up my EMT bag. “We’re taking this just in case. I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.”

And that was the end of our conversation about his past relationships. Of course, I knew there had been some; probably hundreds. But it wasn’t something I’d really cared about. From what I had been told, most of those women would have been from that other reality, which meant they were either all dead, or if they existed in this world, they would be completely different.

Add to that the fact that I was completely not interested in finding out about the ones he had in this world. So, as far as I was concerned, the subject was dropped. And it was, until he picked it up in the car on our way out to Jack’s farm.

“I never talk about ‘em ‘cause I had a different life,” he told me. I took me a while to figure out what he was talking about. Especially since I was cold and still a little nauseous, and trying to stay awake. “But, I’ve been thinking that maybe we should talk a about some of it. Some of them might hear about you and get curious.”

“You talk like that’s a bad thing,” I told him, holding my thermos of tea close to my cheek. I looked over and saw that his jaw was grinding just a little. “It could be a bad thing?”

“Depends on who gets the news and how it’s delivered.”

“Well, as bad as your past may be, mine’s been pretty uncomplicated. So, if they’re trying to find something about me that could hurt you or damage what we have, I’ve got nothing. And I know a lot about your past from the newsletter. They really don’t leave much out of that thing.”

“What newsletter?” He asked in a very low and cautious tone.

I realized at that point that I never told him about it. Things had become so weird after the explosion, what with the search for Travis, and then the fire, I had completely forgotten about the darts and that voice on Stark’s computer.

And the newsletter.

“Please tell me this isn’t one of those stories that begins with you saying “now don’t get mad.” He said very softly. I wasn’t usually anxious around Jim, but the way he was reacting seemed a little overprotective, and I thought for just a moment that it might mean trouble. “Because I don’t like those kinds of stories.”

“Now just a minute,” I told him, setting down the thermos and crossing my arms. “If you’re going to get mad about something, that’s your business. You know me well enough to understand that I do NOT do anything with malicious intent. I thought it was just a regular e-newsletter for mutants. Helpful hints, news about new laws that had passed, and just various things that were happening in the mutant and super-human world. I didn’t find out that it was anything special until that first night you went out to look for Travis.”

His body relaxed a little. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s a long story.”

“We have ten minutes out to Jack Sorensen’s farm, and when we get there, I can lock the doors and wait for you to finish.”

I could tell that he was afraid of something he might hear. “Okay, I’ll start at the end and work my way backwards, then.”

“Is it that bad?”

“No, but it’s that surprising. Apparently, these were sent to me by some artificial intelligence that Tony Stark from your universe had known. Or maybe created, or both. Anyway, this thing was sending me all of the information so that, apparently, I would… I don’t know. I don’t know why. But it had been sending me emails for years. And before that, was probably responsible for the printed newsletters my mom got.” I picked up my thermos again. “Get mad at me if you want to, but they were pretty damn helpful when I was going through school.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, it had a lot of advice on where to go if I needed help. And when I went to college, there were articles about how to mask the mutant gene, hide abilities, and suggestions on how to find others in my area who might be either sympathetic, or even be mutants, themselves.” We turned off the main road onto another one that would lead up to Jack’s farm. “Oh, and it was the newsletter that told me not to register as a mutant, no matter how tempting the benefits were.”

“Sounds like someone was looking out for you.” He pulled over and stopped the car for a few minutes. “When you say it was something that knew my Tony Stark, well, that could mean someone really good or someone really bad. Actually, it could mean a lot of the really bad ones.”

“But why would a really bad computer program want to send me a newsletter?”

“You started receiving these when?”

“Um, must have been high school.”

“Before or after I came to your graduation party?”

“I’m pretty sure before.”

“So, it was after you came to visit the school.” He started driving again, this time a little more relaxed than he had been, but with his eyebrows still knitted in a scowl. “I might have to make a couple of phone calls before we leave.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

Jim never liked being told what he was and wasn’t going to do. But this time, I was adamant. We were going fishing to relax, and if he got on the phone with Tony Stark and started postulating, and cross-referencing, and trying to solve this mystery, there was no way either of us was going to relax at all up there. “This one time you’ll have to wait. I want to go ice fishing with someone who is there for me if I need him.”

Jim just sat there in silence for a few moments.

“I’m sorry. I really am,” I told him. “This is a conversation that should have already happened, but because of all kinds of circumstances that neither of us could control, it just didn’t. Now, there’s nothing you can do at 6:30 in the morning on a Sunday, but call Stark and start talking with him about all kinds of possibilities and then get frustrated that you’re not able to do a damn thing about any of it. I need to relax. Doctor’s orders. He’s worried about the baby and what might happen if I’m constantly bombarded with more and more stress.”

The rest of the car ride was quiet. As we pulled up next to Jack Sorensen’s farmhouse, Jim took my hand. “You’re right,” he told me. “I’ve thought that sometimes you don’t worry enough. I know, and I’ve always known, that you can take care of yourself, but there are bigger things out here, and… well, maybe I’ve been worrying too much.”

“It’s because you care about these people, and you care about this world.”

He nodded. “And because I love you.”

“You have this bad habit of saying these things and holding my hand just before we’re going to get out of the car in a public place,” I told him. “Maybe next time you can tell me just before we go to bed, and then I can do something with my mega-hormone-influenced response to hearing you say that.” I don’t think I can ever stress just how happy I am when something I say can make him laugh like that.

As we got out of the car, Jim took my hand and stuffed it in his pocket. “Well, I’ll try to keep that in mind tonight when we get home.

“Oh, when we get home, I’ll be half-frozen and wanting at least an hour with cocoa and a blanket in front of the fire.”

Jim rang the doorbell. “That can be arranged.”

 

It was cold out there. No, that doesn’t even begin to describe it. It was really, really cold. So cold, that as soon as I got out of Jack’s truck, my snot froze inside of my nose, I could feel my eyeballs starting to freeze, and I wanted to just turn around and go right back inside.

“It’ll get warmer after the sun comes up,” Jack assured me. “What we got right now is jus’ about the coldest time of day out here. But get yerself inside and we’ll get the stove goin’.”

For those who have never gone ice fishing, the ice house is the most essential part of making it through the experience alive. Jack’s house wasn’t one of the large, deluxe ones with beds and a kitchen and all the extras, but it was large enough for at least six people, had a nice little wood-burning stove in the center, and he’d stocked it with enough wood to last him several trips. There were four holes in the bottom of the house, each with its own cover. Those were where we would be fishing. 

Kyle lead me inside and sat me down on the bench that was covered in cushions. “I’ll start the stove,” he told me. “Dad’ll get the blankets out of the car, and you can wrap yourself up if you want, but it should warm up pretty fast.”

Jim came in and put my EMT kit on the bench next to me. “Hot packs if you start to shiver.” It was almost a command rather than a suggestion. “Promise me you’ll stay warm, no matter what. No stress, right?”

“Right. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what those hot packs are for.”

He pointed at me as he headed back outside. “I’m pretty sure that’s EXACTLY what they’re for.”

Kyle got the fire going in the stove, and then went outside to help unload the truck. There were two coolers, various boxes, and a huge jug of water. All the fishing gear and kitchen supplies were already tucked away inside the ice house.

After everything was unloaded, I noticed that Jim hadn’t come back inside. “Where’d he go?” I asked Jack.

“Oh, he saw something over by the treeline, and went to go take a look. Said he’d be right back. I’d say he’s gonna freeze out there, but I kinda think it’s not possible for him to actually freeze, is it?” Jack sat across from me on the other bench.

“No, not really.”

Jack shook his head as he got out his tackle box and started preparing a line. “That’s just amazing to me. I mean, dere’s a lot of people that think you and him might be dangerous, but the way I see it, there’s no sense in fearin’ something that’s come here to help us out. Might as well be afraid of a fireman or a doctor.”

“I’m a nurse.”

“Yup. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You and your man out there saved my life. Not only mine, but my men and all those men up at the refinery. And the only ones that been doin’ any sort of hurtin’ and damage to people ‘round here are the normal men that can’t see past their own evil intentions.”

I leaned forward and held my hands out to the stove. It was already getting warm, and I felt a lot better for the heat. Louis brought over a kettle of water and set it on top. “It’ll be about ten minutes for the hot chocolate,” he told me.

“Maybe I should go look and see where Jim is.” I got up and set the blanket aside.

“You’re not going after him, are you?” Kyle asked.

“No, I just want to go and see where he went.”

In the back of my mind, I feared that Jim had seen that creature again. And if he had, I would go back inside and make sure everyone was very still and quiet and out of the way if it came down to another fight.

But what I saw surprised me. Jim was all the way on the other side of the lake, just talking to a man who had a giant bear by his side, scratching behind its ears. As the man turned, I could see that it was Travis with his hair down, extending all the way down his back, and wearing traditional clothes. 

He nodded at me, and then Jim looked back in my direction. He raised his hand and then pointed at the ice house. I could almost hear him grumbling about the cold.

When I went back inside, the boys had set up their lines, and had another one ready for me. “Is he still out there?” They asked.

“Yeah, he’s just going to be a few minutes.” I sat on the bench again and picked up the line Kyle had prepared for me. “So, show me how you do this.”

It was at least another fifteen minutes before Jim came back inside. He didn’t say a word, but went over to the coffee pot, poured himself a cup and then came to sit next to me. I offered him my blanket, but he shook his head.

“Did you tell them?” He asked me softly enough so that only I could hear.

I shook my head.

He was silent for a few moments and then nodded. “That was Travis out there,” he announced.

Jack looked up from his line and just stared at Jim for a moment. “He’s alive?”

“Yeah, he’s okay. He wanted me to go and let his family know he’s alright.”

“What’s he doin’ up there? Besides freezin’ himself to death?” Jack asked.

“He’s going after the thing that attacked you.” Jim took a sip of his coffee and then set the mug down on the ledge behind the bench.

“See, that’s what I was sayin’ before.” Jack shook his head. He set the end of his line down on a holder and stood up. “There’s three kinds of people in this town. Those ones that set fire to yer garage and blew up the refinery. They’re the kind that are all selfish and ignorant and don’t know right from wrong. Then there’s all of those that know about you and just leave well enough alone. And then there’s those like me, and I think we’re in the majority here. We’re the ones that think you’re all here for a reason. There’s somethin’ going on, and has been for decades, and you’re here to help us. You two and Travis, and who knows how many others are out there, just tryin’ to make this place better, and… well, anyone who thinks you’re menacing just hasn’t got their heads on straight.”

Jim took my hand and stuffed it in his pocket. It was at that point when I realized what he had been doing. Every time he was trying to cope with some overwhelming emotion, he would do the same thing. Whether it was love or lust, or anger, or a feeling he couldn’t understand, I was his comfort. Taking my hand in his, and tucking it neatly away, was his way of anchoring himself.

I leaned over to rest my head on his shoulder. 

“Jack.” Jim cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. “Thanks.

“Nothin’ to thank me for,” Jack told him. He picked up his line again. “Now, I’ve been straight with you. I always have been and I always will be. But I need you to be straight with me, too.” Kyle and Louis moved over from the far end of the ice house to sit next to their dad. “It’s still out there, and he’s goin’ after it, but does that mean the boys and I are still in danger?”

“From that creature? No.” Jim shook his head. “As long as you stay off of the ridge and away from the woods that lead out toward the foothills, you’ll be fine.”

“But from something else?” Louis asked.

Jim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s a big storm brewing. I’m not sure what exactly is coming, or how bad it will be, but that first group of people you were talking about? The ones who attacked me, attacked the refinery, and then went after Travis? They’re planning something big. And Lucy and I might as well have giant targets painted on our foreheads.”

“Then you’d best get yerselves someplace safe.”

“No, this is where I really come clean with you. I’m no angel. And yeah, I can take an arrow to the head and have my arm all but cut off, and bleed out four pints of blood and still survive. But there’s a little more to me than that.” Jim took our hands out of his pocket.

“It’s come down to that?” I asked.

Jim looked at me. “They should know before things start getting bad. Otherwise, it’s a pretty nasty surprise.” He stood and took off his coat, then rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. “So, boys, a long time ago, this little lady here used to call me “zipper-man.” I’m gonna show you why.”

 

They were all remarkably accepting of Jim. The boys were fascinated by him, and wanted to know all about what he could do, what he had done, and the looks on their faces when he told them about his secret name just about made me laugh. After they were sworn to secrecy, Jim suggested that they plan a vacation, and that he “knew a guy” who could arrange something really special for them.

Suddenly, the boys forgot about Wolverine and zipper-man, and were talking about hockey and going to see the Flames play in Denver.

We didn’t get back home until almost nine. I went directly inside, and after I was settled in by the fire, Jim went into the kitchen to start cleaning the fish. “I don’t want to go out again until summer,” I grumbled, holding my hands and feet up right next to the fireplace grill.

“You say that now, but you’d be out in a heartbeat if you found out someone needed help.” I could hear him washing his hands, wrapping the fish up in plastic bags, and putting them into the freezer. “Are you hungry?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m just tired.”

Jim came into the living room. “Go to bed.”

“Not yet. There are a few things we need to talk about.” I stood up and then flopped down in my regular place on the sofa. “What are you going to do with me? I mean, where should I go?”

Jim came over and sat next to me. “I’m going to send you to go live with Tony for a while. He’s got a building in midtown Manhattan, and I’m sure there’s plenty of room for one more person.”

That was not what I wanted to hear. I had accepted the fact that there was something nasty that might come after me. I had also realized that I would be an ideal target if they were after Jim, since word was getting out and around that he not only cared about me, but that I was carrying his child. So, I knew I would have to go away for a while. But, I had hoped it would be someplace closer.

“When?” I asked.

“When things start happening.” Jim took my hand and let out a long breath.

“You don’t want to do this, do you?”

He shook his head. “This is what I hoped I had left behind.”

“Will you come and visit me when I’m in New York?”

He shook his head again. “No. I don’t want to lead anyone to you. When the danger is over, or when we can figure out how to keep you safe, you can come home. But…”

“Travis told you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure he’s right about this?”

Jim nodded.

“He’s not a mutant, is he? He’s something else.”

“Let’s go to bed.” Jim got up. I thought he was just going to go upstairs, but he took a few steps forward, then stopped and held his hand back toward me. “Of all the things we could talk about tonight, I’d rather not talk about stuff that’ll take you away from me.”

I got up and went over to him. “Okay.”

He took my hand and smiled at me. “Instead, let’s go upstairs and see if I can tell you those things that over-stimulate your hormones or whatever it is you said before.”

“With all the estrogen and progesterone pumping through my body, all you’d have to do is tell me you loved me again and I’d--”

“I love you,” he interrupted.

“Let’s go upstairs.”


	35. Moving Heaven and Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from bad to worse, and hormones that make Lucy overreact aren't helping matters any.

I’m not a fragile person, and I never have been. All those girls out there who are really feminine and delicate, and all eyelashes, bleached hair, makeup, and flowers have nothing to do with me. I’m the stocky one who’s always had a few extra pounds, wide hips, roly belly, and an attitude that’s just about as cynical as they come. I wonder sometimes why some of the wives in town would put on these airs for their men.

Now, I’m not going assume that any of them are weak for doing what they do. No, if they want to dress up and make themselves pretty and smelling nice just to play a game where they turn into a baby for their man, that’s their business. I’ve seen plenty of these delicate flowers stand tall and hard and fast when it comes to an issue, and they’re just as strong as anyone else.

But that’s not me. Which made me wonder why Jim was standing in the kitchen, coffee pot in hand, just staring up at the top of the refrigerator, trying to think of some way to break the news to me. Oh, I had no idea what kind of news this was, but that look in his face was just too obvious.

He shook his head slightly. No not that.

He sucked on his lower lip. Maybe that.

He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Okay, gotta do this.

Jim turned to me and saw me just staring at him. “Are you done thinking?” I asked sweetly. “Ready to tell me what’s on your mind?”

He came over and poured out two cups of coffee. “It’s decaf.”

“I know. I got rid of the regular stuff. Took it in to work for the lounge.” I kicked his chair out from the dining room table and gave him my look. This is the one that both amused him and sent the message home that I wasn’t joking in the slightest. “Now, out with it.”

He took a drink of his coffee. “I called Tony last night.”

“Yeah. You said you were going to do that.” That wasn’t the news. “You talked to him about the newsletter?”

“No. I cancelled the wedding,” He looked over at me, peering over the top of his coffee mug.

I closed my eyes and tapped my coffee mug against my teeth. Of course, it made perfect sense. There was no way we could have had some big celebration with AMS around, and that creature, and whatever it was that had Jim so anxious he was ready to send me away to New York.

But this was my one big thing. And realistically, I knew that if it didn’t happen this winter or spring, it wasn’t going to happen at all. There would never be a good time for a wedding. Someone would always be watching us. I would be far too pregnant in the summer and fall. Have a baby to take care of next winter and the following spring, and a year from summer just seemed so far away.

“Then we just won’t have one at all.” I set down my coffee mug and went into the living room. “I better call mom.”

“Lucy, wait.” Jim put his cup down and came after me. “We’ll just postpone it. We can plan on…”

“When? Summer when I’m uncomfortable and huge and have swollen feet? Fall when I’ll either take the chance of going into labor at the wedding or have an infant and letting down milk all over the dress? Or maybe next year. A year from now? Next spring?”

Jim just stood there and stared at me with a pained expression. He did that so well.

“Lucy, I’m really sorry.”

I let out a long sigh. “It’s alright. Really, it is. Weddings are for thin and pretty girls with long hair and eyelashes. They’re for girls who get flowers and like limousine rides and champagne in their orange juice.” I held out the phone for Jim. “You call mom. I don’t want to tell her the news.”

He just stood there for a moment, and as he did, his face went from a pained expression to a nasty scowl. “Lucy, you have no idea--”

“What’s out there? Yeah I know. And I don’t know what’s going on. And I don’t know what you do. And I don’t know what your friends do. And I don’t know jack shit. But I do know that you’re just trying to keep me safe, and if it means sacrificing a dream or two so that I can live longer, then that’s what you’ll do.” I slapped the phone down in his hand. “But this isn’t the end. This thing, menace, whatever is out there? It won’t be the last. There is never an end for us. I may not have big fancy mutant powers, and I might not be the target for some of the worst offenders, but I’ll always be a target for someone. And if I have to give up every single dream that I have just to live for another week or another month, then I really am only alive to help others and I’ll never have anything for my own.”

Jim looked down at the phone in his hand.

As I look back, I blame hormones. I think that was why Jim was so shocked, I never go off on selfish rants like that. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking straight, and I had already started to cry, so I decided to lay on a little more.

“And don’t ever cancel an important event in my life again without talking to me first. This whole bit about telling me after the fact is just bullshit. I know I’m going to look fucking ridiculous in a wedding dress, but I thought that was my option.”

I turned to storm upstairs, but was caught on the second step, hauled back, and carried over to the sofa. Jim was shaking, literally trembling all over with what I thought was rage. When I looked at his face, though, I could tell it was something else. “Victor Creed is out there, and he has someone with him who has even more of a vendetta against me.” His hands were shaking, so I turned them over and held them together in my own. “This is old business that I need to take care of. If they got to you, I wouldn’t fight. I don’t think I could. We fight to live, we fight to avenge, we fight for justice, but none of those things would bring you back if they killed you. That’s why you have to go away.”

“How do you know I’m the target?” I asked.

“Travis told me. He can hear the conversations on the mountain. Something’s going to happen, and then when I go up there to investigate, they’re coming down here for you. She wants to leave you on my doorstep for when I come home.”

I felt a drop of moisture on the back of my hand. Jim’s eyes had teared up, and instead of blinking them away, he was still staring at the backs of my hands. I reached up and pulled his head down into my lap, gently petting back his hair. “You’ve fought this woman before?”

“She can do it. She could easily kill you. I just see that image in my head over and over again.”

“But you know their plans now, right?”

“Knowing the plan isn’t the same as knowing how to stop the plan. Because if they know you got away, they’d just follow you to New York. They have AMS on their side, and some of their own people working with them.” He took a deep breath and looked up.

“Were you planning on telling me any of this?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I was just going to send you off and deal with it all myself. Well, with Hank and the others. I thought that the less you knew, the better.”

“And if you didn’t survive?”

“I never think about that.” He got up and moved from the coffee table, to next to me on the sofa.

“You better start thinking about it, mister. If this baby’s a boy, I don’t have the slightest idea how to teach him how to pee standing up.”

Jim chuckled. “And if it’s a girl?”

“Then you gotta teach her how to play hockey.” My anger had all but gone away, and a little bit of fear was starting to sink in. There really was some major threat out there, and I had been stubbornly just going about my business as if it didn’t exist. “So, what’s the plan?” I asked.

“Stark and his men are coming out here on Thursday to get the house ready. When they do that, there will be an escape passage, so that when something happens, you go out that end, they’ll pick you up, and you’ll fly out to New York.”

“And I’ll come back when it’s all over?”

“That’s the idea.”

“How long will it take until Peace River is safe again?”

Jim picked up my phone and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t know.”

I pointed to my phone. “Call mom. Tell her about what’s going on. It’s okay to tell her everything, and then make sure you say that you’re sending me away to live with Mr. Stark. She can pass that along to my brother, and it will take the sting away from cancelling the wedding.”

Jim laughed.

“And when you’re done, I need to call Dr. Green.”

“You’re not going to quit, are you?”

“No, I’m going to have him put all of my information on a CD so I can take that with me. I’ll work until the very last moment, if necessary.”

Jim leaned his head against my shoulder. “Lucy?”

“What?”

“You’re the best.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“You’re also the most beautiful, prettiest, and most attractive woman I’ve ever known, whether you’re made of flowers and perfume or not.”

 

I had been on edge for a week after Stark and his men left. Although he had assured me that there was nothing to worry about, and that the plan was solid enough, I could still only see a million things going wrong.

And I was right. Nothing happened the way they had expected. Well, nothing regarding me, anyway. The first problem was that I was at work when it happened. It was the middle of a Wednesday, and I’d just finished lunch and come back on the clock when Daken came barging into the clinic, insisting on seeing me.

Okay, so Daken hadn’t actually made himself a good name in town. Jim didn’t trust him. Hank, Kurt, Peter, and the others didn’t trust him. Dr. Green certainly didn’t trust him, and pretty much nobody liked him and the way that he slung his arrogance around all over the place. 

He’d been in more bar fights than any of the men who came down from the bitumen sands. He was rougher than anyone from the refinery, and he irritated the hell out of women in the bars.

I think, in all honesty, I was the only person in town who was glad he was there. And that was for two reasons. First, I realized early on that if he was still in town, that meant he wasn’t getting into trouble somewhere else. And secondly, although I knew the guy was something of a psychopath, there was a reason for it, and to be honest, anyone who went through what he did might have had his brain broken in a few ways. So I felt for the guy.

It also helped that it was highly unlikely he would be able to harm me if he still had some of my blood “contaminating” him.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I came out into the waiting area. Daken had both fists on the front counter, and had been shouting at poor Lindsey. Just after I arrived, Dr. Green came out, as well.

“You’re coming with me.” He grabbed my wrist and started dragging me toward the door. 

“Wait! What’s going on? My things… my coat?”

The doctor came up to him and pulled his hand off of me, then gave him a funny look. “I dare you to give me a reason,” he said in a low, threatening voice.

“Your bark doesn’t scare me, old man.”

“Then, perhaps I could show you my teeth?” I could have sworn I saw a flash of green in the doctor’s eyes.

Daken swallowed hard and pulled his arm back. “Sixteen mutant clinics have been bombed along the west coast. Including Calgary, Victoria, San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles. We don’t have word from the East coast yet, but there are also reports in Atlanta and Chicago.”

“It’s happening,” I breathed.

As Daken started telling Doctor Green about more violence, I ran back to my locker, grabbed my things, and headed out into the waiting area again.

“Did Jim send you?”

Daken laughed. “What, you still want to follow the old man and his worthless little plan? You think they don’t know you’re going to hide out with Dr. Moneybags in New York?”

“Where do you want to take me, then?”

“Somewhere. Not here. Not… nowhere near here. I can’t believe that he would let you stay here this long.” There was something in the way he was speaking that made me question this whole situation. And from the look on Dr. Green’s face, I suspected he knew something, too.

“Let’s go into my office.”

“There’s no time,” Daken insisted.

“There is time for this. And if I have to snap back to an older version of me, then that’s what I will do, but for now, I think it would be best if we sat down and put all the cards on the table.”

As we went to the back, Dr. Green snapped his fingers, and it appeared as if everything in the clinic just froze in time. “I have about ten minutes of this peace that I can offer you, and then everything will go back to normal. So, please, make it quick.” We passed by the nurse’s station, and down to his office. He motioned for me to sit, and for Daken to stand by the door. He went around his desk and sat on his oversized chair, looking very much like a king preparing for an audience. “Lucy, you’re not very powerful. As a mutant, you are, quite frankly, very weak and unimpressive. However, you have managed to bag one of the most sought-after and powerful creatures in this world.” He nodded his head a few times, then corrected himself. “In any world, now that I think about it.”

“I know that,” I told him. I hadn’t really known that at all, though.

“And now you’re carrying his child. Which, I might add, has already shown signs of a power that I have never even seen before.”

He turned to Daken. “And you. What exactly are your intentions? The last I heard, you were a psychopathic murderer who has more blood on his hands than an army surgeon in the middle of a war zone. To imagine that you’ve turned over a new leaf, so to speak, is beyond my ability.”

“Ask her. She did something to me,” he grumbled, nodding in my direction.

Dr. Green looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Is this true?”

“I contaminated him with my blood,” I admitted. “It’s likely that every time he touches me or is in contact with me and my body fluids, a positive emotional response will be triggered.” I shrugged. “Just one of my weak and unimpressive mutant powers.”

The doctor combed his fingers through his hair and groaned. “Only about five minutes left. Alright, so the problem now is that we all need to save Lucy. I agree with this considering what various factions would do to her and the fetus. So, that begs the question, where should she go?” He looked directly at me. “If what he says is true, and there are attacks all over North America, then going to Stark Tower is not the best idea. First, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get there safely, and once you’re there, you will still be a target.”

“What do you suggest then?” I asked.

“As much as I hate to do this, there’s only one place for you to go for now. I want you to take her to my house.” He took his keys out of the top drawer of his desk, and unhooked a house key. “When you get there, I want you two to look under the stairs. There’s a door that will lead to a cellar. Do Not Touch Anything!” He pointed at both of us, then tossed me the key. “Now, we need to get back out there before time starts up again.”

As we passed by the nurse’s station, I tapped Dr. Green on the arm. “I thought you said you didn’t have any powers here?”

“I lied,” he told me.

“What else can you do?” Daken asked.

“That’s none of your business.”

We went into the waiting area, and Dr. Green positioned us just as we had been when he snapped his fingers before. “Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Just go there and wait for me, okay?”

I nodded. Daken huffed. 

Time started up again, and Dr. Green strode off back into the clinic. 

“Come on, let’s go,” Daken told me, taking my elbow.

We left the clinic and he nodded over toward a small rental car. “Get in.”

“Do you trust him?” I asked as I got into the car.

“Nope. Not one bit.”

“But we’re still going to his house?”

“Yup.”

“It’s because he’s right, isn’t it?” I asked as we pulled out of the parking lot.

“Yup. If I take you to Stark, it’s gonna be a media frenzy, and the whole world will know you’re there. If I take you home to your place, Vic and Lady D will have you gutted and strung up before you know it.” He drove along River Road and then turned to head out toward the lake.

The ride was silent most of our way out there. I kept listening for some kind of commotion out in the woods, but there was nothing but peace and stillness and sometimes a rustle from the wind in the trees. So I spent the time just watching out the window, trying to remember where we were, what we passed, and looking out for mysterious creatures in the woods.

Something was very wrong about the whole situation, and the way Daken was completely calm, with no gritting of teeth, no agitation in his shoulders, and no cursing every time we hit an icy patch. 

I dug through my purse and brought out a box cutter, then extended the blade. “Stop the car,” I told him.

“What? Are you crazy?”

“No, stop the car. This is all wrong.”

“I’m not stopping the car. What are you going to do, anyway, kill yourself?”

“No, I’m going to cut my hand and smear my blood on your face.” I started counting in my head, and when I got up to five, I sliced across my palm right across the radial artery.

That’s when he pulled the car over on the side of the road near the woods. “What the hell are you doing?”

“No. That’s not the right question. The right question comes from me and it’s “Who the hell are you?” At least, I think that’s the first thing I want to know.” I brought my hand up just an inch over his mouth.

For a few moments, nothing happened, then it looked as if Daken just faded away and a striking woman sat there in his place. Mostly striking because of her blue skin and bright red hair. “You’re not weak,” she growled.

“No. I’m not. Neither is my husband. And if you know anything about him, you’re probably aware that he’s most likely smelling my blood in the air right now and possibly in a blind panic.”

“Probably.”

“And at the same time, I’m betting that whatever’s out there is smelling my blood, too.”

She smiled. “Definitely.”

“I see. So, that was part of this plan?”

“No, but your unexpected actions are certainly helping things along.”

I think she would have laughed at that if she had the chance. No, I’m quite sure she would have laughed at that. But before I could even think about it, I jammed my hand in her face and muffled her. “I don’t know you. I don’t care. What I do know is that I’m no more than a half a mile from Dr. Green’s house, and I can run there if I need to. It might not be the safest place in the world, but it’s something I can work with.”

Before I even finished speaking, I noticed tears streaming down from her face, and her breathing becoming rough and uneven.

I just nodded. “So, now you know. My little powers that are useless in a fight aren’t too bad if the goal isn’t to physically hurt someone.”

I pulled my hand away, then sat back in the seat again and put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. “I need a tissue. Can you get one out of my purse for me?” I asked.

The woman just looked at me like I was insane. My own blood was all over her face, and when she shook her head, it looked almost as if she had bitten me.

“That’s okay. I can get it. Looks like you need one, too.” I reached into my purse and brought out the tissue pack. I gave her one and then took out the rest to put pressure on my wound. “You look like you’ve been drugged. Can you still drive?”

She shook her head again.

I sighed. “Fine. Get into the back seat, have a little lie down. I’ll drive the rest of the way.” I brought a bottle of water out of my bag and handed it to her. “Drink this. From what Sage said, water will help wash the worst of it out of your system.”

I waited for her to crawl into the back, and then moved over into the driver’s seat. I actually had to backtrack quite a bit to find his house. She’d been driving me far into the woods, probably to meet up with the very people Jim thought were after me. With the smell of my blood on the air, I felt like I was running away from a zombie or a vampire, or something, and it was just a race against the clock to get to the house before the party started.

I finally found the mailbox with Matt Green’s name on it, and turned into the drive.

“He would move heaven and earth for you,” she said from the backseat.

“Yeah. And I would do the same for him.” I put the car in park and got out, then opened the door to the back. “Come on, let’s get you inside. I know the doctor told us not to touch anything, but you should at least wash your face before he gets here, or there’s no telling what he might think.” I reached out my uninjured hand toward her.

“You’re far too trusting. You know that?”

“Yeah. I know that, too. That tends to happen when you live in a world where half the people think you’re a threat and the other half think you’re weak, and every one of them has decided that you don’t belong. If there’s nobody you can trust at all, it becomes something of a paradox, and you just trust everyone, instead.”

“What does he see in you?” she snarled.

I could feel it in the air. Something was coming. There was a crack of some branches from across the lake, and then a low growl. “That’s a question you’ll have to ask him yourself. Now, are you coming inside, or do you want to just wait out here and get ripped to shreds by the people you’ve just double-crossed. Well, them and also Jim and Daken, who are also probably on their way.”

She sat up and got out of the car, then followed me inside. I locked the door behind us, and sent a text message to Jim.

 

_ Since when have there been blue women acting all jealous about you? _

**_Get away from her now._ **

_ We’re okay. She’s in kind of a stupor. _

_**Get away from her. Where are you?** _

_ Dr. Green’s house. And we’re fine. She’s washing my blood out of her mouth right now. _

**_You didn’t._ **

_ I sure did. Got a whole mouthful. Get here ASAP. _

**_I’m almost there._ **

 

While the woman was washing her face, I poured her a glass of milk and set it on the counter. “Drink this, too. Protein will help get it out of your system.”

“Do you know who I am?” She asked, wiping her mouth with the dish towel.

“Nope. Not a clue. But Jim tells me to get away from you.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the counter. “Two choices,” I told her. “You stay with me and face Jim. You leave and you face whatever it is out there. Either way, I’m staying here. Doctor Green said to go under the stairs. Well, we haven’t gotten that far yet, and frankly, I’m angry and injured and not interested in hiding right now, so what you do next is up to you. Although I have to say, you look a little woozy, and the nurse in me wants to suggest you sit down for a little while and recover.”

“What are you, anyway? They told me you were just some stupid girl with weak mutant powers who was no threat to anyone.”

“I’m a healer and a caregiver.” I stuck my finger in the milk and swirled it around. “Here, drink up. It’ll taste like chicken soup. That should help cover up whatever is triggering your emotions right now.”

She smelled the glass and looked up at me again. “It smells like milk.”

“Drink it.” I started looking through the cupboards and finally found what I was looking for - peanut butter. 

I took a spoon out of the silverware cup that was on the kitchen island, and scooped some out for her.

“Tastes like chicken soup.”

“Yeah, just I said. Here, eat this, too.”

Now, I’m not entirely sure about the order of what happened next, but I do know that before she could take the spoon of peanut butter, there was a crash through the windows on the back porch, and another woman, with what looked like swords on her fingers, strode into the kitchen.

“You must be the prize,” she announced.


	36. Evening the Odds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fight ensues, and Lucy misses the worst of it, being safely tucked away in a most unexpected place.

I don’t think I had, or ever will be, more afraid for my life and the lives of everyone around me, than I was at that moment. All I could think as that woman approached me, was that if she killed me, and consequently the baby, there was no telling what Jim would do. I’d seen him angry before, and I’d seen him fighting, and he’s fierce. But he was in control all those times.

So, when she called me the prize, my mind didn’t even register what she was saying. I was blindly panicking, and wondering why I had to die here.

Luckily, a voice inside of me answered that I didn’t have to die there, I could die somewhere else if I went to that door under the stairs.

“I’m a prize?” I asked, as I slowly backed toward the kitchen door.

“Oh, you’re not just a prize, you’re THE prize.” Then she said something in another language that was probably Japanese or Korean. As she was ranting, I backed up, out of the kitchen, until my hand was on the doorknob just under the stairs.

“Okay, so, you’re here to kill me. I guess that means you want to make Jim angry.”

“Jim?”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “Logan.” That name felt weird when I said it.

She just smiled. I could see the blue woman standing behind her, also smiling for a moment, and then breaking down and crying. Apparently the protein wasn’t working very quickly.

I took a deep breath, and in one move, opened the door, ducked inside, and closed it, falling down on a small landing. Not a moment later, some kind of lever slid across the door, and a panel on the side lit up with a bunch of geometric shapes and Celtic runes in the center.

“Okay, now, I’ve just stepped into a science fiction movie,” I said to myself. “Doctor Green’s been holding out on me. First the magic, then this.”

I made my way down the stairs, and the basement was filled with all kinds of… things. It looked almost like a museum of arcane and ancient artifacts. Over in the far corner, there was a sofa and a large desk and chair that looked to be fairly safe and free of things that I had been warned not to touch. There were papers on the desk in a very neat stack all written in some code or language that I’d never seen before. 

I decided not to tempt fate and sit on the sofa.

“Right. This is good. I’m away from the scary sword lady and the blue lady, and now I’m locked in a cellar full of artifacts belonging to my boss who happens to be a god that hasn’t actually lost all of his powers, but has been lying about it all this time. And upstairs, all hell might be breaking loose soon because there will be a Jim Howlett and no Lucy Howlett in sight.”

I took out my phone and typed in a text message.

There was no signal.

“Oh, come ON! I’m not that far underground.”

I looked around the room, and ended up wandering back up the stairs to try the door again and make sure it was locked. Not only was it secure, but there was no obvious door handle or release catch for the lever. “That panel looks pretty tempting, but promising not to touch extends to weird glowing runes, as well as the antiquities collection down there,” I told myself.

Most of the things that were sitting around in the basement were on pedestals, each with its own little notebook written in that odd code. Some looked like weapons, some looked like tools, and there were a few objects that didn’t look like anything at all - just cubic or spheroid chunks of metal or glass. 

I looked down at my hand and wondered if there was anything that could be used as a bandage.The tissues had long fallen off, and it was starting to ooze blood again. Finally, I found a dish towel under Dr. Green’s mug on the desk. Figuring he wouldn’t mind too much if I used that rather than bleed all over his things, I picked it up. Unfortunately, as I picked up the mug, the wound opened up again, and I had use the towel to wipe blood off of the rim of the mug, as well. “I’ll get him a new towel. Or maybe he’ll learn that as a doctor he should have a first aid kit around here somewhere,” I muttered to myself.

As I looked around, I got more and more nervous about what was happening upstairs. A good ten minutes had gone by while I was investigating the door, looking through the collection of odds and ends, and attempting to get some kind of reception on the phone. So, I knew Jim had to have arrived by that time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get word to him that I was alright.

“Maybe the blue lady will tell him where I went,” I pondered. “If she lives long enough, and if he gives her the chance.

My hand was throbbing, there was no bathroom in the place, I had no idea what was going on upstairs, it was kind of cold in the room, and I felt completely useless. So, with nothing else to do, I decided to lay down on the sofa and go to sleep.

 

“Up.” I felt a finger tapping my head. “Come on, you need to get up.” I opened my eyes to see Dr. Green standing above me. “Do you just fall asleep anywhere?”

“My life’s more complicated than it should be, I’m pregnant, I was trapped down here, and forbidden to touch anything. What would you have had me do?”

There was a slight flash of a smile. “You didn’t touch anything?”

I held up my hand wrapped in a towel. “This. I owe you one towel.” I closed my eyes for a moment, then pushed myself up. “Where’s Jim?”

“Probably fighting. Along with his friends.” Dr. Green went over to the desk, picked up the chair, and brought it over by the sofa to sit. “Now, as for you...”

“Can you open the door and let me out? I couldn’t send a text message to Jim, so I want to let him know I’m okay.” I scratched my head and tried to get my hair to settle down.

“No, I don’t think that’s going to happen just yet. First I need to decide what I’m going to do with you. I believe you are what is being called “the prize.” Isn’t that interesting? Of all the mutants and super-creatures in the world, you are the prize?”

I didn’t like the tone in his voice at all. “Is this mischief?” 

“Oh, most definitely,” his smile widened, and there was a flash of green in his eyes.

“So, we’re not in my world anymore.” 

“You don’t seem surprised about that,” he observed.

I made an elaborate gesture with my hands. “I’ve just met someone who looked like Daken who turned out to be a blue lady with bright red hair. And then, in came another woman speaking a foreign language with swords for fingers. I’m a mutant with a glowing fetus, my friends are either different colors, different shapes, made of different materials or various combinations of the three. I find out my boss can do magic tricks, and I’m currently trapped behind a door with some kind of a rune-lock. There’s not a whole lot to surprise me today. Unlike Alice, I have no problem believing all kinds of impossible things before breakfast.”

 

I slumped back into the sofa and thought for a moment. If Jim was fighting, and Dr. Green was here, it was likely that nobody knew I was safe. And, in fact, there was a good chance that I wasn’t safe, considering Dr. Green’s reaction just now. I could think of only one thing to do.

“Well, whatever you decide to do, can you get me some water?” I pointed to the mug on the desk. “I’ve lost some blood, I’ve had a pretty shitty day so far, and I think my foot is starting to cramp from dehydration.”

He reached back, and the mug came flying into his hand. “Water?”

“No, don’t tell me, you would rather see me suffer.”

He went over to the sink near the washing machine and filled the mug. “No, I don’t want you dehydrated. That little fetus of yours is under enough stress as it is. I want to make sure it is healthy.” He held the mug out to me.

“You take a sip first.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Let me see. Blue lady, swords-for-fingers lady, snapping fingers to freeze time…” I rolled my eyes. “I have trust issues today. So sue me.”

“You really are grumpy when you first wake up, aren’t you?” He took a sip of the water, then handed me the mug.

“Not usually,” I told him. I drank down the rest of the water and then set the mug aside. He sat down again and smiled at me, and I just watched him until his smile started to fade.

“Oh, dear, you don’t look so well, Dr. Green. But that’s not your name, is it? It doesn’t matter what your name is, let’s start figuring out how this whole scenario is going to unfold.”

“What have you done?” He asked. He leaned forward in his chair and stared down at the edge of the sofa. “What…?”

“I’m weak, right? Not much I can do. So, let’s figure this out. I think you’re going to go up there and release the lock on the door, and we’re going to make sure Jim and the others know I’m alright.”

“Lucy… I can’t…”

“You need protein. Although, that didn’t work very well for the blue lady. Maybe the massive amounts of hormones running through my blood is making the effect stronger.” I tapped my chin, then pulled Dr. Green’s face up. “I need to get out of here.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“And you were going to just keep me here until it was safe and then release me?” I asked in a cynical tone.

“No, I mean yes, but you would have been safe.”

“Well, I don’t care about that right now. If I’m such a prize, then they’ll want to come for me. I have a plan.”

“You have a plan? You have never been in a fight before in your life.” He kept shaking his head. It pleases me to think it was because he was trying to shake off the emotions that were haunting him.

“I have been in plenty of fights. And I do have a plan and it’s a good one. It involves you putting away everything that’s of value to you, me leading the big bad wolf and the sharp and pointy lady down here, and then you doing your magic on them.”

“I do my magic? Do you even know who I am and what I do?” He asked.

“No. Not really. I think if I had to guess, I’d say you were some kind of Vik...ing. Oh.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Viking? Not a bad guess. Viking god? Closer.”

“Really?”

“Really. So, what do you expect me to do? Play some magic tricks on them? Turn them into horses or maybe wolves? Set them on fire, perhaps?”

I waved my hand. “I don’t care. You’re going to do something. I’m going up there as the bait, and you’ll be here as the barbed hook. Just go open the door.”

“Or you’ll do what?” He asked.

“Or I’ll spit on you. Maybe lick you. Or even worse, and this will really make Jim very very angry, I could lick your lips and change your scent to mine. Either way, what that will do is intensify the effect of the blood, and you won’t have fleeting emotions, but a full-on flashback like little miss blue did up there.” Considering the fact that my powers were pretty weak by most standards, there was real fear behind Dr. Green’s eyes.

“Open the door,” I told him.

“What if you’re killed as soon as I open it?”

I shook my head. “You’re asking a nurse, and first responder. You know that answer. All I’m going to do is ask what if there are injured people on the other side of that door. And you’re stalling. I don’t know for what, but you’re stalling.”

“Well, maybe it’s because I have a memory that poking my brain in places where it hasn’t been poked for many many years!”

“Well, maybe you should have thought about that before trying to capture me and call me a prize. I am ONE person’s prize. One! Get it? And that man’s up there fighting for me, so I choose him to be the winner. Every. Goddamn Time. And that’s YOU the god that I’m damning, mister!” Cheesy one-liners aren’t really my thing. I generally just let the wall-crawlers and point-and-shoot types have at them.

“What’s the worst that could happen? You get killed, and then I duck down here and life is back to normal in a few hours.” He shrugged. “Better than being forced to relive another life over and over again.”

I followed him up the steps. “So, you’re not actually a nice person in your real form, are you?”

“No. Not nice.”

“But you’re forced to be in my world?” I clasped my hands behind my back.

“Yes. Forced to be because that’s what’s expected of me by the few followers I have. Which is why I’ve created my refuge here. To get away from being the embarrassment that is Dr. Green for a while.”

“Hmmm. Well, I think more people would prefer Dr. Green over you. You certainly have more power over people’s lives as Dr. Green.”

“The power to make people better? The same as a million other doctors out there?”

“But you’re the only one who stands up to mutant-haters. Dr. Green did good things. Most other doctors I’ve worked with were prejudiced assholes.”

He keyed in something on the control panel, and then the bar slid away from the door and a handle seemed to form itself out of the wood. “There you go, Lucy. Off to meet your doom, as they say.”

“Do they say that?”

“No. Nobody really says that.” He extended his hand for me to shake. “It was great working with you, even as someone I was not.”

“Not shaking your hand. I don’t trust you.” I opened the door just a crack and felt his hand on my back. Before I could think about what was happening, I spun around, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pushed him, and myself through the door.

Into a whirl of chaos, crashing furniture, breaking glass, and lots of people fighting other people.

“What happened to our plan?” I asked him.

“Your plan - Our plan. Dammit!” He shook his head. “Stupid reality.”

“Doctor Green is back.”

He snarled.

“Get off of me, and let’s get to work.”

It seemed as if the worst of the fighting was over. The sword-fingered lady had gone, and there was no trace of Creed - the one I had been most worried about until the others appeared. I could tell he had been there from the tufts of white hair and fur that were in the hallway, but there was no trace of him other than that.

Well, some of the blood might have been his. There was actually a lot of blood.

Dr. Green got up and snuck into the living room where Hank and three AMS members were fighting. They weren’t wearing their robes and hoods, but they did wear blue jackets with giant letters “AMS” in white on the back. Idiots.

I went back into the kitchen. There was a man on the floor there whose breathing was uneven and he was beginning to tremble. “Okay, let’s get to work,” I muttered to myself.

“Study on this floor,”  Dr. Green shouted over the sounds of fists flying and bones breaking. “Opposite side of the stairs, closest to the front door. Bring them in there.”

“Right!” I took off my coat and laid it on the floor, then managed to move him onto my makeshift stretcher. “Damn, you’re heavy, mister,” I told him. Grabbing the arms of my coat, I began dragging him down the hallway. That’s when Ororo noticed me.

“Lucy! You’re alive and well?” She came up to me and stared down at my patient.

“Yeah, well, this guy won’t be if he doesn’t get some treatment pretty soon. Can you get him to the study? Lay him out flat on the ground there, put his arms in close to his body and swaddle him in my coat. I’m going to get blankets and towels and I’ll be right in there.”

I didn’t wait for an answer, but just stuffed my coat sleeves in her hands and went off to the kitchen to get some towels and water. 

There was still fighting going on in there. The blue lady had two knives and was exchanging German words and blows with Kurt as he lept from the counter to the kitchen island, then to the table and back again.

They didn’t even notice me empty the towel drawer and grab a 2-liter bottle of water from the counter.

When I was back in the study, Dr. Green had already moved two men into the room, had treated some of their wounds. He was preparing a needle to sew up a huge gash on the leg of one man. “Lucy, you’ve got water? Bring it over here.”

“I couldn’t find blankets,” I told him as I brought over the towels and water.

“I’ll get them.” Ororo volunteered. “Where are they?”

“Upstairs in the closet in the hallway. Bring down blankets and towels, and there should be another first aid kit in the closet. Bring that down, too, so Lucy can get started on these other idiots.”

Without another word, she was off on her mission. I went down to the man I had found and tied his legs together with the towels. Then I stuffed another towel under his neck to prepare a clear breathing passage. It didn’t do any good. He was still gasping for breath, and his pulse was all over the place. 

“I’ve got erratic breathing and heartbeat and the first signs of shock over here.” I told the doctor. “I can sew up that one if you come over and take care of this one.”

I ran over to the sofa where he was working. “Okay, finish this up, then give him antibiotics.” Dr. Green handed me the needle he was working with, we switched places, and I got to work.

A few moments later, Hank came into the room. “Lucy!”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” I finished sewing him up and tied off the string.

“She said she killed you. Logan…”

I spun around and fell back on my heels. “Where is he?”

Hank shook his head. “He went after both of them.”

“Lucy, the antibiotics!” Dr. Green was still over by the man I brought in.

“Right!” I rustled through Dr. Green’s medical bag and found the antibiotics, and also pulled out a cortisone shot and adrenaline.

“Here, take these,” I called to Dr. Green, and tossed him the other two syringes.

After giving the man some antibiotics, I stood and looked out the window.

“She told him that you were gone.” Hank told me. “He’s in a full rage.”

“Get out there and call out for him,” Dr. Green told me. “I’ll have Beast and Storm here to help me, but there’s no helping anyone out there if he’s in a berserker rage. Go. Now.”

I nodded and got up.

“Don’t go far. Stay here at the house and just call out for him. If he can hear you, that means there’s a good chance Creed can hear you. And it will be a race between them as to who gets to you first,” Hank told me as he walked me to the back door. 

There was a beautiful view of the lake out the back door of Dr. Green’s house. A small wooden path led down to the edge of the lake where a fishing dock extended out over the frozen water. I figured the best way of being heard was to shout out across the lake. Hopefully the trees and the hills that rose up on the other side would act as an amplifier and help my voice echo throughout the woods.

I called out across the ice. “Jim! Jim! Please come back!” I waited for a moment, part of me waiting for a reply, but another part of me knew there would be no response. “I’m fine. We’re fine! Please come back.”

Hank’s words replayed in my head. I should have just shouted out, trusted in Jim’s hearing, and gone back inside. But I couldn’t tear myself away. I just stood there in the cold, looking out over the lake. It was almost completely dark, and I had left my coat inside, but I couldn’t feel the cold at all. “I’m right here.” I sat in the snow at the end of the dock. “I’ll wait here for you.”

I think I must have been out there for almost five minutes before Hank came out, picked me up, and carried me back inside. “The last thing we need is another patient, Lucy. Get in here before you’ve got your death of frostbite.”

Hank brought me upstairs to the guest bedroom and sat me down on the bed. He slipped out of his blue beast form and soon looked like a regular man. “Lucy, when that woman - Lady Deathstryke she calls herself - when she told him she’d killed you, something just snapped in him. And it might take a while for him to snap back.” He knelt in front of me and put his hands on my knees. “I’m not going to debrief you now, but if there’s anything you can remember that might help us figure out what’s going on, I’d like you to just think about it, keep it in your mind, focus on that, and we’ll talk about it later.”

I nodded. “She called me the prize.”

Hank patted my knee. “Later.”

“No, she called me the prize, and when I was down in Dr. Green’s other dimensional basement, he called me the prize, also.”

“Later.” Hank stood and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Ororo’s gone to look for Logan. She’ll find him. Now, I know you want to come down and help us, but it might still be too dangerous for you. The other woman - the blue one - that’s Raven. She’s Kurt’s mother, and she’s very, very sneaky.”

I nodded. “You might even be her. I might be her. Anyone could…”

“No, not anyone. And she’s currently tied up, unconscious downstairs.” He headed toward the door. “Just stay here for a little while. I’m sure Ororo will bring Logan back soon. Until he returns, there’s nothing anyone can do.”

The wait was excruciating. Kurt came up at one point and brought me a sandwich and some milk. Sage came up to just sit with me for a while, and gave me my phone. It had been in my jacket that I’d used to drag that man into the study. At one point, I could hear the police arrive, and Jackson demanding to see and talk to me. Someone had run interference for me, though, and he soon settled down and agreed to come back and talk to me after I’d recovered.

The problem was that I’d done nothing but recover, sitting up there in the room. I sent some text messages to Jim, even though I knew that he wouldn’t get them. His phone was probably either somewhere around the house here, or in his car, or most likely lost in the woods somewhere.

 

_ I wish you were here. _

_ I’m just fine.  _

_ I’m sorry about all of this. _

_ I still feel like it’s partly my fault. _

_ Why am I the prize? _

 

Almost an hour after I was brought up to the room, Dr. Green came in. He pulled up a chair and sat in front of me. “Two men died.” He announced, crossing his legs and folding his hands on his knee. “Not the ones we treated, though.  A few went running away up into the woods, and with those injuries, it didn’t take them long to die of hypothermia. The ones we treated are all doing as well as can be expected.”

I just nodded.

“Now, how are you doing?”

“Why do you care? I mean, the prize is intact, isn’t it? Do you still think of me as your prize when you’re Dr. Green?” I really didn’t want to have this conversation yet, but if he was going to sit down in front of me and start chatting away, I wasn’t going to back down.

“You can call me Matt when we’re not at work.”

“Matt. Okay, then. I don’t want to talk about whether you care about me or not. I think the answer to that was in our conversation in the basement. But what I do want to know is what kind of memory would a god have that’s so good or bad that he didn’t want to relive it?”

I was hurting. He was one of the ones who caused this whole mess, and I wanted him to hurt, too.

“Something I don’t want to talk about.”

“No kidding. But guess what? We’re talking.”

“I had a brother. The rest of my family… well, I cared about my mother, and my father cared about me, but my brother…” He shook his head and got that far-away look again. “My brother was the other side of me. I sometimes feel like I’m walking around with only half of my body.”

“But he’s around here somewhere, right?”

“No. He’s not here. All of that stuff downstairs? I’ve been trying to find him since I realized what’s been goin on. Why else do you think I’d live so far north? The skiing? The fishing?”

“Of course he’s here. I mean, we’ve all heard stories about him. And what was your memory, anyway? It’s a taste memory.”

He opened his mouth to answer and then shook his head. “No, that’s too complicated to explain right now. But that taste reminds me only of him.”

There was a commotion downstairs that interrupted our thoughts. At first, I thought Creed or Lady Deathstryke had returned, from the sound of the crashing furniture, and Hank and Kurt shouting. But I recognized another voice in the noise.

Amidst the voices yelling “she’s fine” and  “they didn’t do anything to her” and “she was somewhere safe,” there was a voice that just kept on asking, over and over, “where is she?”

I ran to the door of the room and then rushed down the stairs before Ororo and Matt could stop me. “I’m here,” I told him, on the verge of crying with relief.

He was injured, but it certainly wasn’t the worst that I’d seen. It was the look on his face that was the most telling about just how much he had been hurting. There was an emptiness in his eyes when he first saw me, and then a flash of recognition, and he was back.

It’s hard to put into words just what it felt like being wrapped up in his arms at that time. For the first few moments, it was like there was nobody else in the world. Even though Hank and Kurt were standing right next to him, and Dr. Green was watching from the top of the stairs, we might as well have been alone in our own home. My face was planted firmly in his neck with his hand on the back of my head, and his other arm holding me tightly around my waist.

“You smell like blood and sweat,” I mumbled into his neck.

He just nuzzled my face and held me closer. “She said you were dead,” he whispered.

“She’s a liar.”

“I’m really glad she is.”

“It was a bad fight?” I asked, breathing my words against his neck.

“Bad for them,” he told me. After a few moments, he loosened his grip on me, and moved back just far enough to see my face. “What happened to you? I couldn’t smell anything of you but your blood on Mystique’s face and that towel.”

“I was tucked away in a… well, a room. I think Matt can explain it better for you.” Thinking about the ordeal brought the tension back into my shoulders and I could feel my pulse start to quicken again.

Then Jim brought his hands up to my face and leaned in to kiss me. With the taste of him in my mouth, I could relax again. It was the taste of safety and of comfort, and when he breathed onto my lips and told me that it would be okay, I believed him.

“Get a room,” Daken’s voice came from the hall. 

 


	37. The Prize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They figure out what the prize means. Then, just before they're about to leave town, Lucy is attacked.

The word “debrief” is a little misleading. It sounds like someone going in and sitting down with a cup of coffee while another person with a notepad writes down the things they say.

Well, it’s kind of like that, I suppose. But in my case, there was a lot of arguing, there were questions coming from all directions, and a lot of observations about things I had said, that didn’t go along with what they thought would have happened. So, the entire ordeal was very frustrating for me.

They - meaning all of our mutant friends in town - asked me about being called “the prize.” They asked me about the little alternate-dimensional room in the basement. They asked me about what the blue woman - Mystique - had said in the car when she looked like Daken. And they asked a lot about what my blood did to her when I gave her a mouthful of it. The more the others asked questions, the more agitated Jim became.

Then, while they were interrogating Dr. Green about his basement, Jim just stood up and left. 

“Logan, where are you going?” Ororo asked.

“Out. To get some air.” He went over to the cigar box on the fireplace mantle, took out two cigars and went outside without even grabbing his hat and coat.

I watched him leave, and then went over to the window to see him standing out in the snow, smoking while the others continued discussing what had happened to me.

“Lucy, are you okay?” Kurt asked. He came into the living room and stood next to me at the window. “Oh. I see.”

“I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he’s angry with me, or mad at himself, or if he did something out there he’s struggling to come to terms with, or frustrated with the whole situation.” I shook my head.

“Why don’t you go and ask, then?” he suggested. “Logan doesn’t seem like the type, but sometimes he really does want to talk to someone about these things. He usually comes to me, but I think today, he probably needs to talk to you.”

“What about my debriefing.”

Kurt laughed. “You don’t know anything other than what you’ve already told us. I think the one we really need to debrief is your Dr. Green over there, who’s being surprisingly cooperative.”

“In this world, he can do no mischief. He can lie, but only with good intent.” I went over to the pegs by the door and took down my coat. “Make my excuses to the others, okay?” I told Kurt. 

“Of course,” he said with a flourish and a bow. I huffed, toed into my boots, and ran outside.

As soon as the door closed, Jim looked up. His shoulders slumped and he put out his cigar by snuffing it on the lamppost. “What are you doing out here?”

“You’re angry with me?” I asked, approaching him.

“No. Why would I be?” He scratched the scruff on his chin and then looked away. “I’m angry with the world for goin’ after you. Like it’s some kind of goddamn scavenger hunt.”

I put on my coat and stood next to him. “I’m causing you a lot of trouble, aren’t I?” I asked.

“No. If anything, I think it’s the other way around.”

I shook my head “I had no financial stability in California. I couldn’t afford my tiny one-room apartment, and I kept losing jobs,” I told him.

“Let me finish,” he said.

“No. I won’t. I know where you’re going with this, and you can stop that line of thinking right now, mister. If you hadn’t arranged for this job up here, I would have probably taken a job at that mutant clinic, and been killed when it was bombed. I would have been miserable and lonely every single day of my life until that point, and I likely would have only seen you once or twice, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that I loved you.”

He stared at me. “Lucy, this is all because…”

“Because we’re together? Yeah. But you know, this is the best my life has ever been. The life I had back there wasn’t worth living. Maybe I’ve cut thirty years off my life expectancy by coming up here with you. But those thirty years would have been years of loneliness, misery, pain, and being degraded all the time. Up here, I’m valued, loved, and…” I wasn’t sure if I could ever explain what life was like before. Jim had seen it, but he’d only seen part of it. He didn’t know about just how little I was able to accomplish for all the hiding I’d had to do.

“Lucy…”

“I’ve been obsessed with you since I was a kid. I loved you back then. I idolized you. You were the best thing, the most amazing person I’d ever met. And then later, I got to know you, and I went from loving you like a kid, loving a teen idol, to loving you as someone I wanted to be with and help and just have in my everyday life.” I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets. “Don’t blame yourself for this. Even if bad things happen, you’ve made my life so much better, you can rest assured that you’ve more than made up for whatever you couldn’t do for that other Lucy.”

I turned to go, but was brought back when he grabbed my elbow. “Stay out here with me,” he said softly. “Just fer a few minutes.”

I took my hand out, laced our fingers together, and stuffed both of our hands in my coat pocket. “Only until the frostbite starts setting in,” I told him. “I would tell you I’d stay out here with you forever, but I refuse to lose our baby to something as stupid as standing out in the cold too long.”

Jim took the other cigar out of his pocket and tucked it in his mouth without lighting it. “Lucy.”

“Yeah?”

“Got a confession to make here. I didn’t come out here blaming myself for all the things that happened to you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, you didn’t let me finish. I was gonna say that I’m gonna find out who’s been comin’ after you, and I’ll string them all upside-down in the woods if they lay one finger on you again. Yeah, I’m causin’ you trouble, but I can take care of trouble. Dunno if you ever heard this, but I am the best there is at what I do.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” I felt a little odd, having jumped to those conclusions.

He squeezed my hand. “Thanks, though. Lotsa people point out all the things that I’ve done wrong over the years. Not too many will come out and tell me the things I done right.”

I shrugged. “You’re my best friend, among many other things. This is what we do.”

When we went back inside, everyone was in the living room waiting for us. Hank leaned his head over the back of the sofa. “We found out what “the prize” means.”

“Aside from it being me?” I asked.

“Well, it isn’t you,” Sage told us. “It’s your unborn child. Or rather it’s his unborn child.”

“Wow.” I hung my coat up on the peg, kicked off my boots and went in to sit in my usual seat on the sofa. “I’ve gone from being the prize, to being half-responsible for the prize, to not even being the important part of the prize in one breath.”

Jim leaned over the back of the sofa. “You’re my prize. That’s all that matters,” he whispered in my ear.

“Right, well, either way, we need to keep you safe somehow,” Sage told us. “Stark has some ideas on how to turn this place into a safe-house. So, after he sets up the security web, as long as you stay here, you should be alright.”

I let out a long sigh. “And how long will that be?”

“Well, until after the baby’s born, at least. And then after that, you’ll be able to…” Sage began.

“I’m not staying cooped up in here for seven months! No way.”

“Actually, we were talking, and we think after six months, it would most likely be safe enough to induce labor.”

I turned around to face Jim. “Are you hearing this?” 

I needn’t have asked. He was standing behind me, arms crossed, giving Sage the fiercest scowl I’d ever seen. “Get out,” he told her. Then he looked around at the rest of our friends and shook his head. “All of you. Just leave now.”

Kurt looked apologetic. “This isn’t me, man,” he told Jim.

“I know. We can talk about things later, but right now, I’m not sure what my reaction will be if you lot keep yammerin’ on about Lucy’s future without even talkin’ to her about it. She may not be part of our group from back in the day, but she’s got more right than most of you to decide what to do with her own baby. So, you can all go off and make all kinds of decisions about what’s to be done, and then come back to me so I can just shove ‘em back in your faces.”

Jim went over to the front door and just stood there.

“What about me?” Daken whined. 

Hank tapped him on the head. “Read between the lines, kidd-o. They want some alone time tonight. And do you really blame them?”

“Gross,” he smacked Hank’s hand away.

“We’ll put you up at the House of Blue tonight,” Kurt told him. 

As she left, Ororo put her hand on my shoulder. “Be safe tonight. It’s unlikely anyone will attack again, but be alert just in case.”

After everyone had left and the house was quiet, I settled in on the sofa while Jim lit a fire. “What I don’t understand is who set you up as a prize. No, I’m not buyin’ for one moment that it’s just ‘cause of the baby. It’s you - both of you. So, who has such a vendetta against me that they’d go after you - that’s the one question that’s still out there.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. “No, there’s another question, and it just sickens me to think about it,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

“Who told this mystery person that I was pregnant? We’ve been up here for months together, and nobody’s really come after us. But not even a month after we find out I’m pregnant, things get violent.” My voice trailed off at the end, and I couldn’t bear to look up.

“Well, it ain’t any of our friends. They’ve all been really quiet about it. And Dr. Green can’t tell anyone else.”

“No, it isn’t any of them.”

“You think you know who it is.”

I nodded. “I think I do. The worst part is that it would explain a lot of things, if it’s true.”

Jim sat down next to me. “You don’t wanna say it.”

“I don’t want to believe it. But I think it was a direct chain from me, to my mother, to my brother, and then to his father-in-law. Now, I’m pretty sure he didn’t know what he was doing. If you think about it, it’s likely he would have told him just in idle conversation. Or maybe he told Carmen, and then she told her father.”

“He’s an AMS member?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Hence the segregated wedding. He couldn’t really execute all of us at his daughter’s wedding, but he could make us feel very uncomfortable, and take notes of who was a mutant and who wasn’t for future reference. But that’s not the worst of it. He has a cousin who’s… well, he’s just about the worst of the worst. I don’t have a name, though. Bradley’s only told me that even he can’t stand to be around him at family events.”

Jim just sat there for a few moments, grinding his teeth. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“Please don’t actually mean that.” I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“I want to, but I don’t.” He wrapped his arm around me. “Think of yer mom. How’s she gonna feel when she finds out?”

“She’s not. At least not from us,” I told him. “Before we jump to any conclusions, I need to talk to my brother about this.” I sighed and slipped down so I was laying in his lap. “But for now, I just want to rest. Too much has been happening too quickly, and I can’t keep up. The stress is really starting to get to me.”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t get to the little one.”

“Yeah, well, if what Doc Green said was true, it can probably heal itself quicker than I can recover.”

Jim leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Maybe that’s why it’s growing so fast.”

I huffed. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’ll have it before the end of March.”

  
  


I remember the next week so very well. It was blissfully uneventful, and the most exciting thing that happened was that our internet was on the fritz, and Jim cooked up some of those sunnies and lake trout that we caught while ice fishing.

We had both decided to wait to talk to my brother, wanting to talk to him in person to get the full story about what happened. That way, we could also check to see if he was lying. Jim suggested we arrange to meet them at some neutral place, but they lived in Washington DC.

“I’ll call Stark. He’s coming out here to fix up this house, so he might as well bring us back with him. It’ll give us an excuse to go up and visit your mother, too.”

And then, once that was settled, there was nothing left for us to do but wait.

We watched a lot of hockey, Jim watched basketball, I got caught up on reading my trashy fantasy romance novels, and unpacked those last few boxes that I’d tucked away in the closet after the move.

Things were great. They were perfect. Or rather, as perfect as they could be under the circumstances.

And then I got stabbed.

We had gone into town to get some things before our trip out to visit my brother, we filled up the gas tank, I went into the clinic for a check-up after the ordeal, and Jim wanted to stop into work and see how things were going. But as we were coming out of the mall, I felt a sharp pain in my side. I doubled over, fell down, and as I reached over to where the pain was, I felt the handle of a knife. It had gone through my coat, sweater, and right under my ribcage on my right side.

“Lucy?” Jim asked in that voice that sounded more curious than concerned. And then his voice changed. “God! Lucy!” He was down, at my side, with one arm around my waist, and the other holding the knife in place. “Don’t pull it out. Don’t touch it. Just stay right here.”

A couple came up to us  to see what was going on, and stopped as soon as they saw the blood. “I’m calling an ambulance,” The man said.

“Call the Riverside clinic. Tell them to get Dr. Green. Everyone else stand back. Just stand back and give us some room.” Jim barked out orders in a way that ensured everyone would obey. He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and hit a speed dial number.

That was when I started losing consciousness.

It wasn’t something I would normally do. And although I’d been in pretty stressful situations before, this was the first time in my life that I’d actually passed out after being hurt. I knew that I should try to stay awake and aware and calm to avoid physiological shock, but I couldn’t seem to keep my mind focused.

I remember hearing Jim talk to Kurt, telling him to bring Hank and hurry. I remember him laying me down in the snow, and putting his coat over me, and then I remember him shouting at someone else to get away.

Then my mind slipped into a completely different state. I might as well have been on another planet for the dreams that I had.

It’s important to describe what happened in my mind, I think, in order to understand fully what was happening to me in general. My dream, if that was what it was, was in a very warm place, filled with soft pink, orange, and yellow light. I felt as if I was inside a warm peach with lanterns floating all over the place. I wasn’t actually there, though, since I didn’t have a body, and I was just watching the lights float around.

I could hear voices speaking in my mind, not in a real language, but in some kind of code that only I could understand. As I watched this place, the sky ripped open, sending in a rush of warmth that burned as it flowed around. But almost as soon as the heat passed through where I might have been, the tear in the sky sealed itself up, and the lanterns collected all of the heat and sealed it away.

Everything was comfortable again. 

And then, there was a soft thumping noise. I felt as if I could almost recognize where it had come from, and then I regained consciousness.

“Dammit, we’re gonna find out who did it, and I’m gonna kill them.” That was Jim. I could recognize the anger anywhere. I almost smiled at the sound of his voice, and then realized there was a tube in my mouth.

“It’s winter, Logan. There won’t be fingerprints on the knife. I’m pretty sure whoever it was had gloves or mittens on.” That was Kurt. His voice was soft and reassuring, but there was a definite edge to it. It was only when he was agitated that the German accent came out strong.

“Well, there’s gonna be some kind of evidence on that knife, and if we can’t find it at the station here, I’ll send it to Stark.” That was Jim again. He obviously didn’t realize I was awake yet.

“We might be able to find something in our lab here, you know.” And there was Hank’s voice. The gang was almost all there. It sounded as if everyone was in the same room as me, but nobody could tell yet that I was awake.

Then I felt a hand on my wrist. “Stay down just a little longer, dear. Just rest.” And there was Ororo. She had the gentlest voice of all. “Actually, maybe we should tell Logan. He’s in quite the mood today and there’s no telling what he’ll do if I don’t let him know.”

I felt her lean down and touch her forehead to mine, then she stood up again. “She’s awake,” she told them. I could almost hear her smile.

Jim was the first one to me. He came right up and put his hands on the sides of my face, then untaped the tube from my mouth. “Lucy, oh, thank god. There you are.”

“Eyes are heavy,” I told him. I opened them anyway, and smiled at the looks on everyone’s faces. “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.”

“The knife went right into your liver,” Kurt told me.

“Then I’m in ICU. So, why are all of you here?”

“Because you’re not in ICU and it’s all but healed up already,” Jim told me. He started smoothing my hair back and away from my face.

“That doesn’t make sense.” I sat up, and surprisingly I could move with no problem, and I had very little pain.

“Dr. Green said it’s likely that the baby has Logan’s healing factor, and then you have some of the baby’s DNA running through you,” Kurt said as he moved around to the end of the bed.

I looked doubtful. “Can it really happen like that?”

Jim shook his head, and the rest of them just snickered. “No, but that’s what we’re gonna tell those who are in the know. And those who aren’t in the know, well, we’ve got a real chance here, and no matter what you say, we’re not passing it up.”

“What do you mean by a real chance?” I asked. I reached over to where the wound should have been, and couldn’t feel anything but a little bit of soreness and stiffness in the muscle.

“Well, best we can reckon, it was some leftover idiot from the AMS goons that were in town. Now, stabbin’ you in the side like that, he oughta know it wouldn’t kill you. But it might well kill the little one.” Jim took a step back and crossed his arms. “And we’re gonna make it so people think that’s just what happened.”

Dr. Green came into the room with a stack of paperwork. “Miscarriage due to maternal trauma.” He handed one of the papers to Hank. “Witness signature right here, please.”

Hank signed the paper and handed it back to Dr. Green.

“Wait, so we’re going to tell everyone the baby’s dead?” I asked.

“It will be on record. Also, I got back those results from the DNA blood tests. It’s actually quite interesting.” He moved to the side of the bed and started typing on the computer. “Apparently she not only has a healing factor, but it’s a lot like her mother’s in that if her body fluids are mixed with someone else’s, the healing factor will, at least temporarily, extend to that person, as well. So, it wasn’t actually the DNA in your blood that was healing you, it was the fetus, itself.”

He turned the monitor toward us.

“Wait… you’re saying she can heal me? That the baby was the one who healed me?”

Dr. Green smiled and nodded. “That’s certainly what our lab results are showing.”

I looked over at Jim, who had the strangest look on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was upset, disappointed that he had been wrong. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

Jim nodded. He seemed to gather himself together again and smiled. Then he looked up at Dr. Green. “She? So, it’s a girl?”


	38. Family Reunion

When I left the clinic, the crowd of co-workers who were offering me condolences and assistance, and generally just trying to lift my spirits, well, they almost made me feel bad about what I was doing. I still ached from the knife wound, and I had several layers of bandages around my torso to both give the impression that I still had an injury, and to mask the glow of the baby if she decided to act up again.

Maria volunteered to check on the house for us while we were visiting my mother, and I was really close to just telling her everything, but luckily, Jim was there. “It’s alright. Our friends are going to be staying there while we’re gone, and things should be just fine,” he told her.

Mr. Stark had already set up a pretty elaborate security web at the house. One that would only allow certain DNA signatures access. Which meant that if anyone but Kurt, Hank, Daken, Ororo, or Sage entered the property, all kinds of cameras would turn on and immediately send a signal to Mr. Stark in New York. Then, if they attempted to enter the house, the security system would trigger and notify the police.

I thought it was still a little overkill considering how we, the targets, would be 3000 miles away from there, but Mr. Stark insisted. I think it was his way of contributing.

As expected, by later that evening, the entire town had heard about my “miscarriage,” and were sending me text messages, casseroles, cards, and phone calls wishing me the best. Even Mr. Chin from the chow mein restaurant we liked sent flowers with a card written in Chinese characters. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jim could read it. “It basically says that although we suffer a tragedy, there’s a blessing in its wake.” He set the card down on the table by the flowers. “Or something like that.”

I looked up at him. “What are we going to do with all this stuff? I mean, the flowers we can take with us, but the casseroles, and fruit basket, and cookies?”

“Daken will eat ‘em,” Jim told me. He shrugged. “And whatever else, we can just put in the breezeway to freeze until we come home.

“When will that be?” I pondered, slumping down in my chair at the table.

“At this point, love, I have no idea. It seems whatever we plan, there’s someone else out there plannin’ against us. So for now we’re just playin’ by ear and hoping for the best. Jim came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Come on, we got one more night in this house, and then tomorrow, we go meet your brother. I venture to guess you will need a full night’s sleep to deal with that conversation.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and trying to explain things to mom, too. Please tell me we aren’t trying to make her believe I’ve had a miscarriage.”

“Your mom? Has got some kind of radar for liars. I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could convince her of something she knew wasn’t true. Still, we may have to let her believe it for a day or two, until your brother and his family leave.” He came around and offered me his hand. “Let’s get you to bed.”

 

I was a wreck the next day. Not only was I slightly jet-lagged, still feeling tired and achey from the day before, but I had the worst motion-sickness in my life, even though in Stark’s Heli-jet, I should have been fine, there was something about the electronics humming, the subtle vibration on the floor, and the way it floated over clouds that made me incredibly nauseous.

They found a place for me to lie down, and I just stayed there, on my stomach, in absolute misery most of the trip.

“I know you feel like crap, but we should strategize.” Jim came up to me and put his hand on my back. 

“Strategize about what?” I asked. I’m pretty sure I also groaned a lot and said “oh god” a few times, but we can just assume that happened in-between each comment and question.

“About how to talk to your brother. How to find out what he said and who he said it to.”

“You mean you don’t want me to just go and beat it out of him?” I asked, slowly turning from my stomach to my side.

“I think I should talk to him first. You’re not feeling well, and you look like shit. Sorry, love. This will just help with the miscarriage story, and then I can go break the news to him and see how he reacts. I have a former comrade who has a real knack for reading people if that would help.”

“Well, my brother is the worst liar in the world. He’s got the exact opposite of a poker face. Which is probably why Carmen chose him. No, we can leave the professor out of it this time. Although I would like to go and visit him sometime while we’re out there.”

“Really?” Jim sounded surprised.

“Yeah. I think I understand a lot more of what he did back then, and I’d like to thank him in some way.” I rolled onto my back and put Jim’s hand on my stomach. The warmth and pressure soothed my nausea a little bit. “Or at least let him know I support what he did.”

“He’ll know you’re pregnant.”

“Yeah, well, everyone’s going to know by the end of Summer, anyway. Might as well have at least one person on our side who has some pull in the mutant community.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to think of what could actually happen to me if the word got out. “Just in case things get bad again.”

 

I was incredibly ill by the time we arrived in New York, Tony Stark had arranged for my mom, my brother, and his family to be there when we arrived, so they were all there to watch as Jim helped me, looking like the personification of death’s daughter, off the plane, and lead me into the bedroom Stark had arranged for us.

“Lucy! You look awful,” my mom told me as we walked through what seemed like a big, open, living room. “Come here.”

“Thanks mom, I think I just need to lie down.” I hated brushing her off like that. What I really wanted to do was hug her and tell her things were going to be alright. But Jim and I both agreed it would be best if she was kept out of the loop for a little while. At least until after he talked to Bradley.

“You gonna be okay in here?” Jim asked. He put a glass of water on the table next to the bed.

“Yeah, just leave the door open in case I need anything.” I had really wanted to hear the conversation as it went down, but Bradley was standing in the door, watching Jim tuck me into bed. Mr. Stark had enlisted my mother in helping him unload some of our things and had volunteered to keep her occupied while Jim talked to Bradley.

Jim leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Of course. We’ll be just outside.”

I closed my eyes and tried to hide my expression in the pillow. Truth be told, this was all very exciting for me. It wasn’t that I wanted to trap my brother in a lie, but I had been trying to tell him for years that although I was given special treatment, it wasn’t because I was better than anyone else, but in fact because my life was so much more difficult than everyone else’s.

I wasn’t prepared for how things went, though. 

“What’s the matter? Is she okay?” Bradley asked. 

“No, she’s not.” Jim’s voice was gruff, and almost sad when he spoke.

“What happened?”

“Somebody sent the AMS after her. First, she was kidnapped, and there was a pretty bad fight.”

“Oh, god, was she injured?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“Not that time. Not much, anyway. But then a few days ago, one of those AMS goons stuck a six-inch knife in her side.”

Bradley’s voice went soft and almost squeaky. He could barely speak, which meant he had no idea what had been going on. “Is… is she okay? Is the baby…?”

Jim didn’t say anything for a few moments, and then he cleared his throat. “She’s going to be fine. But the baby… didn’t make it.”

“Oh, god,” Bradley whispered. I could barely hear him. “Did you tell mom? Is she okay? Is she going to be alright? Lucy’s always…”

“She’ll be fine. She’s pretty strong, and she’s dealt with a lot of loss over the years.”

“Are you alright?” He asked Jim. That was something I hadn’t expected at all. 

“I’m… I’ll be fine.” Jim’s voice was low and soft, and for a moment, I thought he might just come out and tell Bradley everything. But instead, I heard a pat and the rustling of leather. I think Bradley put his hand on Jim’s arm or shoulder. 

“If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

I had decided I heard enough. I rolled over to face the other direction and tried to block everything out of my mind. I didn’t actually think that Bradley would have told the AMS about me, but I thought he might know something. And I had no idea that he cared that much. When we were growing up, he was always complaining about me. And then after he got married, he never invited me to any of their family functions.

I had thought it was because he didn’t want a mutant around, but…

“I’m pretty good at protecting her from things I know are coming, but the problem here was that we didn’t know she was the target until it was too late,” I heard Jim say.

“I’ve been trying to keep her away from Carmen’s family. I just… do you think they might have had something to do with it?”

“You mean, you’ve been pushing her away ‘cause you’re trying to protect her, too?” Jim asked.

“After the wedding, the things Carmen and her father and her UNCLE were saying… I just… I love my sister. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.” Bradley was choking back tears, I could hear it in his voice.

Both voices trailed off, and then a few minutes later, Jim came into the room. He just stood there for a few moments, then came up to the bed. “Are you awake?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He sat on the bed and put his hand on my hip. “Did you hear?”

“Yeah.”

He lay down behind me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me in close. “Your brother’s okay. He told me a little about his in-laws.”

“They were the ones who sent all those people after me?”

“Well, let’s just say he mentioned a name that I don’t really like to hear.”

I took his hand and pulled him closer. “Did you talk to mom yet?”

“No. Figured we could do that after supper. I should go and tell Tony and the others what your brother said. Jim kissed the back of my neck. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Not as nauseous, and totally relieved to hear Bradley didn’t do something horrible to me.” I wiggled around until I was facing Jim. He looked older in the dim light, and I wondered if he would ever age properly. I brought my hand up to his face and traced the lines at the corners of his eyes and on his forehead. 

“I’m not very pretty,” he told me.

“No, you’re not.” I kissed his cheek. “But then, neither am I. Pretty isn’t that important. I’ve dated pretty, and they were kind of rotten people. I’d much rather have good, rugged, scarred, and recovering.”

Jim chuckled at that. “Well, I am all those things. So, tell me why you like that.”

“Because it means you try.” I moved to push myself up, but he pulled me down again.

“Someday, little lady, you’re gonna make the best mother there ever was. There’s no tellin’ when that might be, but someday.” Jim sat up and took me with him. “Feelin’ okay?”

“Better,” I told him.

“Good enough for pizza? I think that’s what Tony has planned for dinner tonight. Pizza and a side helping of the truth from Carmen.”

“Oh, that sounds just fantastic,” I said sarcastically.

There was a sound of someone clearing his throat at the door, and I looked up to see Bradley standing there. “Pizza’s here,” he told us. “If you’re feeling up to it.”

“We’ll be right there,” Jim told him.

“I’m feeling better now, thanks.”

He smiled and turned away.

“Did you know he was there?” I whispered.

“I thought he might be.”

I took a drink of the water and straightened out my hair. 

“Are you ready for this?” Jim asked.

“No, but let’s do it anyway. Not every day you get to accuse your in-laws of arranging your attempted murder, right?”

 

My mother had been right. Bradley and Carmen’s kids were brats. Jeff and John were probably two of the worst-behaved children I’d ever met. And I can say this because even Bradley agreed with me. When we were all sitting around the table, eating pizza and salad and breadsticks, they started demanding more sauce for dipping. Then they wanted Pepsi rather than the Coke which came with the pizzas. 

“They’re not used to Coke at home,” Carmen told us. “It’s too acidic for them.”

Jim just gave me a look. I took another bite of salad.

“This pizza crust is too thin,” Jeff complained.

“It’s New York style pizza,” Tony told him. “People come from all over the world for this kind of pizza.”

“Well, people are stupid.”

John started picking the onions off of his pizza and putting them on my plate. 

“I don’t want these,” I told him, shoving them back on his plate.

“Well, mom’s sitting all the way over there and I don’t eat onions,” John sassed back at me.

“Well, then just keep them on your own plate.” I didn’t care what Bradley might do, I would have none of this kid’s attitude.

I was almost to the point of changing all of his pizza to taste like raw spinach when Bradley came over and took John’s plate away. “Leave your aunt alone, John. She’s had a pretty rough day.”

“I’ll be she’s just complaining and making it all up to get attention. That’s what mutants do,” John snapped back.

The whole room went quiet.

“Oh really? That’s what we do?” I asked him.

“That’s what Uncle Wilson says you do.”

“Your uncle Wilson is wrong,” Jim said firmly. “Mutants don’t complain about things. Most of us just live our lives like regular people. In fact, I’ll bet there are a bunch of people you know who are mutants, but they never let anybody know.”

The kid looked kind of shocked, but then he just scowled. “My uncle isn’t a liar. Mutants are liars.”

Jim looked over at Bradley, who looked had his back to the table, but was trembling with his fists clenched. Then he looked at Carmen who had a smug and amused look on her face. “Is this what you teach your children?”

She shook her head and feigned innocence. “Me?”

“Yeah. You. The one who sent people to come and hurt Lucy an’ me.”

Bradley went over to the kitchen, slammed the plate on the counter and stormed out of the room.

“What’s all this about?” Mom asked, surprised.

The words were out of my mouth before I even knew it. Maybe we had a plan at one point, but I wanted Carmen to know. “I was stabbed in the side.”

My mother gasped, then stood. “Oh, GOD, Lucy…”

Tony took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. He looked at the boys, then shook his head and got up to leave. “I’m going to get some air.”

“It killed the baby. I guess that was what you were hoping for, anyway, wasn’t it?” Jim told Carmen. He stood, sniffed, then looked at the boys. “Mutants don’t kill people. People kill people. People kill people they think are mutants. And maybe they aren’t. Maybe they won’t be. Maybe they never were.”

“Don’t you DARE talk to my boys…” Carmen began, but my mother pushed her chair back. 

“You are a breath away from losing custody of those boys forever, lady,” She hissed.

Jim pounded his fist into the table. “Your uncle sent people out to murder us. But you know what? They didn’t murder any mutants. No, they murdered an innocent baby that may not have had any mutant powers at all. So, you tell me what you think is right and what you think is wrong?”

John started crying. Jeff just looked shocked and scared. 

“Next time you defend your Uncle Wilson, just remember that he’s a man who sends people out to kill babies.” Jim looked over at Carmen. “You? You don’t get any more chances. Just remember that. I don’t care if you’re responsible, if your father’s responsible, or if Uncle Wilson is responsible. The next time something happens to my wife or my child, or anyone I care about, for that reason, I am holding you responsible. And I’ve got enough friends in law enforcement to put you away where your Uncle Wilson can’t even send you a postcard.”

I stood, and mom came over and put her arm around me. Between the motion sickness earlier, the anger at hearing what my nephews were being taught, and Jim’s diatribe at Carmen, I was shaken enough for her to actually believe the story about the miscarriage. “Let’s get you out of here, Lucy,” she told me softly. “We’ll go to the downstairs kitchen and make you some tea.”

I could feel her hand trembling, as well. That’s when I knew I had to somehow tell her the truth.


End file.
